Kathleen Lippa, Brent Reaney
& Dorothy Westerman
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 22/04) - Johnny Cookie doesn't need a scientist to tell him that the climate is changing. He has noticed the ice getting thinner, and the weather warmer.

"We cannot go anywhere by Ski-Doo or Honda because the ice isn't frozen yet," said the 52-year old Sanikiluaq resident. "When I was younger we used to go everywhere. Even our lakes haven't frozen yet."

Usually by November, Cookie and his family would be travelling pretty regularly between Sanikiluaq and the mainland to hunt. Because the ice is freezing later every year, they cannot do that, he said.

Hunters' observations: The ice is freezing later in the season, affecting the travelling of hunters. Hunters cannot travel where they used to. When the ice does freeze the texture is different than it used to be, so it is dangerous and unpredictable. Polar bears are thinner. Hunters say receding ice is making it difficult for polar bears to reach hunting grounds. Large numbers of muskox are grazing where caribou once fed in the Central Arctic. This could force the caribou to move further North. New birds reported, including robins, which have never been seen before in the high Arctic. Migrations of existing bird populations will be affected. Birds becoming confused by the changing global climate.

When Cookie is out on the land he has noticed the polar bears are thinner. He said the bears are having a harder time getting onto the ice pack and are starving as a result.

Cookie worries that in years to come polar bears will become desperate and be tempted to come into the community looking for food.

That hasn't happened yet, so far.

Global warming isn't just affecting the animals, it's changing the landscape in ways people never dreamt before.

Sadie Joss won't venture to guess what the hamlet of Holman on Victoria Island will be like in 50 years.

"The land is changing. We started discussing it 10 years ago," said Joss, who is chair of the Hunters and Trappers Committee in Holman.

"You can see where there is erosion, where the land is sinking in around where there is muddy areas."

Joss said an ice floe about 50 km away from the hamlet to the east, could once be seen year-round, but no longer exists. "When I travel on the land, it looks like a bulldozer has taken out parts of it," she said.

"It has to do with the permafrost melting in the ground and the land is sinking in.

"You see more of it now, even just this past summer, new spots on the land where that is showing up, and the rivers are really low.

"We were out about 60 miles upland and you can see the rocks in it."

Paul Voudrach, chair of the HTC in Tuktoyaktuk, said he recalls visiting an unusual hill south of the community a few years ago.

"I could see and walk right underneath it. The sand was eroding and you could see the permafrost," he said.

"I don't know what it would be like now."

Because Tuk's beaches are under constant attack from the Beaufort Sea, large rocks and cement now line much of the area.

"But it makes the beaches look awkward and not natural," said Voudrach.

Until 1987, polar bears never used to enter the hamlet, but that has since changed.

"It was the first one we had in the community. Then we had another one in the '90s. You could see it walking on the ice about five miles west of here."

Another oddity Voudrach has noticed is the number of strange insects that have appeared. "One notably is the grasshopper," he said. "We've never had them before in our community."

In Paulatuk, Ray Ruben, manager of the Hunters and Trappers committee, said the reverse of global warming has been happening in his community -- at least when it comes to the spring melt.

"Last spring, the season was really late," said Ruben.

An ice study measuring thicknesses and ice floe trends is currently underway between the HTC and Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Ruben said the permafrost on the banks is melting and caving in the shore.

"It's getting close to the houses," he said.

The hamlet is currently seeking funding to fix the road to a nearby gravel site, he said.

Ruben said it is difficult to predict what the hamlet will have to face in 50 years, but should the erosion continue, he can foresee the entire hamlet having to move further inland.

As for unusual wildlife in the region, Ruben said for the first time in his life, he has heard of beavers making a home in the region.

Clyde River elder Apak Qaqqasiq is worried about how climate change will affect the animals he hunts.

"There will probably be few polar bears if the weather keeps on changing," the 70-year-old told News/North through an interpreter after returning from a hunting trip.

"Polar bears live in the cold Arctic, not in the warm."

He thinks the bears will move to areas even higher in the Arctic where the climate remains suitable.

Jayko Alooloo, of the Mittimitalik Hunters and Trappers Association in Pond Inlet, agrees with Qaqqasik.

"They will have to move to a cooler area," Alooloo said, adding new animals from the south may begin to appear in the North.

Both men have begun to see birds they have never seen before while out on the land.

Qaqqasiq thinks that climate change may also see new forms of plant life appear.

As a child -- even before the settlement of Clyde River existed -- he was told by Inuit elders that "there might be trees in the future."

And Alooloo said he has heard scientists may have found something similar to palm trees near Pond Inlet.

And the glaciers near Pond Inlet -- which 75 years ago stretched to the shore -- have melted a few miles away.

"The only thing I'm worried about is that we don't really have any ozone layer in the North," Alooloo said.

"It will be more dangerous for people with skin problems. It will be a whole new world, and a new Inuit way of life."