TUKTOYAKTUK
Tuktoyaktuk hunter Joe Nasogaluak says the area's polar bear hunting season should be amended after two bears entered the community for the first time in years.
"I think that we have to be aware that these two bears that came in are not going to be the last," the 58-year-old said. "I think people have to realize that Tuk now is a place where bears can come into town."
Nasogaluak has been hunting polar bears for more than 40 years. He said modifying Tuktoyaktuk's polar bear hunting season from Dec. 1 to Nov. 1 would help reduce the number of bears coming in to town due to poor sea ice conditions.
The changing environment means sea ice is forming later in the year, preventing the bears from hunting.
"It's been really mild this year and the ice keeps moving," Nasogaluak said. "When the ice is moving there is no seals, so some bears get thin."
It's been five years since the last polar bear appeared near Tuktoyaktuk, but now two bears have entered the community within the last two months.
"It doesn't happen very often," said Toby Halle, renewable resources officer III in Inuvik. "I think the last time we had one near town was 2011 and it wasn't really in town."
The first bear entered the community in October and while Nasogaluak didn't see it first-hand, photographs taken by other residents appeared to show a healthy bear.
"Maybe not the biggest bear, but medium sized, it looked pretty good shape," Nasogaluak said.
But the second bear that arrived on Nov. 15 was different. Examining its tracks, Nasogaluak said it was clear the bear was very thin.
"As a bear hunter, from experience, you could realize it's pretty thin because the tracks are close together," he explained. "If it's a big, fat bear, the stance is going to be wide. This one was short steps with big tracks, you know it's pretty thin."
Nasogaluak followed the tracks and soon found a very thin, young male bear with yellow-tinged fur.
"It was a very skinny bear and that's dangerous," he said.
It is often male bears that investigate communities and campsites, Nasogaluak said.
"A female is more shy, more cautious," he said. "When you catch up to a big male bear, it's not scared."
Males can weigh twice as much as females and quickly deplete their body fat reserves, said Evan Richardson, a polar bear research scientist with Environment Canada.
"There is certainly a demographic of bears that tend to show up in communities and often young males are one of the more represented groups in terms of problem bears," he said.
"They tend to deplete their body reserves more quickly on shore so as a result, they tend to end up being more desperate in these years when the ice is slow to form."
Nasogaluak also followed the bear's tracks to see where it had come from.
"It came from straight out of the water, out here about two miles out of here, it just walked into town," he said.
As he followed the bear's route through Tuktoyaktuk, Nasogaluak noticed human footprints on the shoreline ice, which he guessed belonged to a female adult and children who had been walking or playing on the ice earlier in the day.
The bear had noticed the tracks, too.
"It went around and sniffed around and checked the tracks and it walked right by the harbour, right through the harbour," Nasogaluak said.
It was simply luck and timing that kept the bear from meeting the people who had previously been on the ice.
"It was a lucky thing that was not the same time the bear was there," he said. "It was pretty dangerous. We're just lucky that it didn't get anybody."
The bear then travelled to an area where people keep smokehouses before it found a dog eating a fish.
"It took the dog's fish and that's when somebody saw it, reported it, and the police came over and it took off," Nasogaluak said.
Polar bears typically don't return if they've been scared enough to run away, he added.
"If you scare it out, or catch it up and you kind of push it out, it won't come back," he said.
An earlier harvesting season would allow hunters to act as wildlife monitors, knowing where the bears are long before they reach the community.
"Myself going hunting, it's like monitoring the bears," he said. "I think it's safer if you open the bear (season) Nov. 1 when the ice is forming out there and the hunters will know where the bears are and be hunting the bears."
This year's late freeze-up meant poor seal hunting for bears and humans, Nasogaluak said.
Fall temperatures have been higher than normal this year, said Brian Proctor, Warning Preparedness Meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The mean temperature in Tuktoyaktuk was -6.5 C in October. But climate normals data from 1981 to 2010 show a mean temperature of -7.4 C for the same month.
Western Arctic sea ice saw some of its lowest levels this spring, data from the Canadian Ice Service stated.
Warm temperatures combined with strong winds in the southern Beaufort Sea meant summertime conditions normally seen in August were happening in May.
The early breakup could have left polar bears marooned on shore, using up vital fat reserves, Richardson said.
"The bears are just spending more time on land they're walking around, they're trying to live off their body reserves," he said.
Sachs Harbour is having a typical year with 15 bears entering the community so far, Halle said. "That's pretty standard for Sachs," he said. "The polar bears go out onto the sea ice there, so they tend to congregate around that area and they'll walk back and forth on the shore trying to find a piece of ice that they can hunt from."
Three of the bears were defence kills, which means they were killed in defence of life or property, according to ENR.
The polar bear season begins in Sachs Harbour on Oct. 1, but only for male bears. Females can't be harvested until Dec. 1.
The last bear complaint in Sachs Harbour took place on Oct. 26. The rules for trying to avoid attracting polar bears is the same for all wildlife, such as not leaving dog food or garbage outside, Halle said.
Nasogaluak said he hopes others will recognize this year's polar bear visits as a sign of things to come.
"This is a warning," he said. "You can see it in the spring time and fall time now. Something is happening."
