NUNAVUT
A new petition circulating the North and hunting circles aims to garner 20,000 signatures with hopes to put an end to the scientific collaring of polar bears.
With over two-thirds of the world's polar bears in Canada and climate change an ongoing concern, the Arctic is heating up in more ways than one; a circulating petition wants scientists to leave bears alone. - Art Sorensen photo |
The claims behind the petition range from inhumane treatment to needlessly invasive research, both of which one leading polar bear researcher scientist adamantly refutes. The petition had 16 signatures at press time.
"The idea of it being inhumane is nonsensical. The effects of handling are very short-lived. It's usually hours, at most it might slow up a bear for a day or two. A lot of times bears are right back hunting within hours," said Dr. Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta. He has been studying polar bears for 30 years. "It's true some people don't like to see wildlife handled. On the flip side it is a standard technique used internationally for basic research."
The petition reads: "We who hunt, eat the meat, and use the skin for clothing for thousands of years, have a very high respect for nanoq (a variation of the Inuktitut word for polar bears) and do not accept inhumane treatment posed by scientists and organizations in the recent years throughout the Arctic."
The petition, originally started in Greenland, alleges scientific research interferes with the bears' natural way of life and in some cases causing the bears to starve and die.
Nick Illauq, a Clyde River resident, hunter and administrator of the popular Facebook page Nunavut Hunting Stories, launched the petition on April 4. He said he has seen photos and heard reports of bears being found dead with collars around their necks.
"Let's say you put on a collar and it was on for months and months and they can't eat and they die," said Illauq, adding some collars grow tighter as the bear gets fatter and it strips the fur. "There's no worse thing for a polar bear - in the wintertime they can get cold and frostbitten."
Illauq said there are concerns about the traumatic effects on bears running from running when confronted with helicopter sound.
"If you make a bear run for 10 minutes it stresses the bear out. We only go after what we're going to kill and eat," said Illauq, explaining meat is another major concern for petitioners. "When they're drugged with the toxin from the tranquilizer dart, how long does it last in the bear's system?" he said. "We're told to cook our polar bears for two hours or more to not get parasites or the effects of these drugs. We're telling them to stop playing with our food."
Derocher said the idea that the bears are tainted with toxins from tranquilizers is false.
"The drugs are cleared within hours. There's no lingering effect. It's gone," he said.
Derocher, who said he supports the polar bear hunt and sympathizes with hunters, said his scientific research is in direct correlation to the importance of the animal for hunters and that if there wasn't such a demand to harvest the bears and sell hides internationally, his own research would be less critical. Harvesting at high levels with sophisticated techniques such as snowmachines, boats and high-powered rifles calls for sophisticated scientific study.
"If you want to maintain the harvest and international trade, there are international standards that come into play," he said, explaining Canada is obligated internationally to study its polar bear populations.
Illauq said petitioners take issue with the need for what they consider invasive research because much of the information is readily available from hunters and elders who have observed the animals' behaviour for decades through generations - there's no need to drug it, tag it, and put a collar on it, he said.
"Maybe the time has come for elders to become scientists," said Illauq.
Derocher said he and other scientists consult elders and hunters in communities. A previous study of denning habitat was done strictly by talking to elders.
"A lot of the time hunters identify places that we wouldn't have found," he said. "There's certainly places where local ecological knowledge can provide great insights and very often the hunters have a lot of information."
Without a sampling methodology, Derocher said hunters are unable to determine specific numbers, trends and patterns.
"When it comes down to abundance, most hunters have a qualitative sense but what you don't often get is a broader perspective," he said.
"We also get a lot of information that just isn't possible for hunters to obtain," he said, citing a radio telemetry program in which scientists can watch bears remotely migrate thousands of kilometres in a year from the Canadian Beaufort Sea to eastern Russia and from Tuktoyaktuk to Nunavut. "Those sorts of long distance movements are impossible for hunters to ascertain."
According to Environment Canada, there are an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in the Arctic. About 15,500 - two-thirds of the total species - live in Canadian territory. Derocher said very few bears will ever come into contact with a scientist and very rarely more than once. According to Garry Enns, manager of external relations for Parks Canada in Nunavut, research hasn't been carried out in any of the parks for about four years.
Derocher, who began studying the animals when the idea of climate change was vague, says it's today's overriding concern for bears, now well documented. The global responsibility for polar bears is heightened, he said, because polar bears are in the public eye along with the likes of lions, tigers and elephants.
"People expect a country to protect its polar bears," he said, adding scientific research is becoming more critical with the increasing presence of industry in the Arctic. Derocher, who was reached in Inuvik en route to conduct another study, devotes much of his energy to determining what would happen in the event of a major oil well drilled, for example.
"Our data could show very clearly that there were lots of polar bears in an area where no hunters would have ever travelled in - it's too far offshore," he said. "It really shouldn't become hunters against the scientists. As much as we can what we really need to be doing is working together to ensure harvests are sustainable."
An official with the World Wildlife Fund, which has a new office in Iqaluit, said the organization supports traditional research such as limited capture-and-tracking, the development of community-based monitoring and the collection of traditional knowledge.
"Without question, the capture and handling of wildlife is stressful and possesses risk to both the animals and the people conducting the work," stated Geoffrey York, a senior officer with WWF's Arctic Species Conservation program in an e-mail. "Since 1990, I can think of five people who lost their lives while conducting polar bear research out over the sea ice. Researchers are constantly seeking ways to improve such methods and reduce the stress and potential risk of capture events as well as developing less invasive alternatives where possible.
"Polar bear research is among the most highly scrutinized and regulated of any wildlife species globally," said York. "It is only with long-term data sets obtained from the careful capture and handling of a relatively small percentage of wildlife populations that we can understand impacts from climate warming, industrial development and other changes occurring over broad spatial or temporal scales."
The Inuit Circumpolar Council of Canada did not respond to News/North's request for an interview by press deadline.
