As usual, clueless scientists jumped to conclusions about things they really know nothing about. DOH …. funding …. must say extinct ….
January 8th, 2010
Harry Flaherty, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in the capital of Iqaluit, says the polar bear population in the region, along the Davis Strait, has doubled during the past 10 years. He questions the official figures, which are based to a large extent on helicopter surveys.
“Scientists do a quick study one to two weeks in a helicopter, and don’t see all the polar bears. We’re getting totally different stories [about the bear numbers] on a daily basis from hunters and harvesters on the ground,” he says.
Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a biologist who has been researching polar bear populations in Canada’s Nunavut Territory for 35 years, seems to agree. “The study estimates from the Iqaluit area agree with those of local hunters, although the accuracy of the counts is doubtful in some areas,” he says.
Gabriel Nirlungayuk, director of wildlife for Nunavut Tuungavik Inc., is another doubter who questions the accuracy of helicopter surveys. “Helicopters have many limitations, including fuel capacity. They can’t go far out into the open water,” he says. But hunters crisscrossing the area by dog team, snowmobile or boat “are seeing polar bears where scientists and helicopters are not traveling.”
Forty years ago, old-timers living in the area around Hudson Bay were lucky to see a polar bear, Nirlungayuk says. “Now there are bears living as far south as James Bay.”
40 years ago was when they drastically tightened hunting regulations. So, duh. Well, except for the Planetary Fever and biologists in helicopters and in front of computers watching ice melt.
But Taylor has been the most objective and thus courageous of the biologists up there and there’s probably voodoo dolls of him in the EPA. The Canadian assessments actually considered reality so they could not support their screams of extinction. And the political pressure was very heavy.
If you were a polar bear and you heard a helicopter approaching, wouldn’t you try to hide from it?
It has been warming in the region so much over the last 40 years the polar bears have been moving south!!!! 🙂
Is global warming killing the bears or hunting?
Hunting is killing far fewer now although ‘problem bear’ kills have increased due to the increasing bear population. That also answers your ‘warming’ question.
The EPA gang LIES about grizzly and wolf populations ALL the time too.