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Walk 3,700 km with a polar bear

From the field, Polar bears, ,

We’ve followed dozens of polar bears on the WWF Polar Bear Tracker since it launched in 2003. But few have wandered as far as Kara, a female bear tagged by researchers in Spring 2013.
By fitting polar bears with GPS collars (females only – the collars slip off the males’ larger necks), researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute can track exactly where the bears of Svalbard go. After years of such work, the researchers get to know many of the individual bears. Sometimes, however, previously unencountered bears appear on Svalbard. Unlike local bears that spend the summers hunting seals in Svalbard’s fjords, these bears may be long-distance wanderers on the sea ice – “pelagic” polar bears.

See her journey on the ice

Explore Kara’s journey on the interactive map:

Understanding long-distance polar bears

Most of Svalbard’s polar bears remain on land throughout the summer, a strategy that requires less energy than long-distance roaming. On land, however, there is less food in the summer. Why do bears choose one strategy over the other? Tracking the bears will help NPI answer questions like:

  • Do individual polar bears shift strategy between years?
  • Do cubs learn from their mothers whether to walk the sea ice or to stay on land?
  • Are the Svalbard polar bears split between Russian-oriented and Greenland-oriented individuals? Some wandering polar bears head east like Kara. Other wanderers seem to prefer to head north and west like N26220, who was collared April 2014.

Research over long periods of time is vital to polar bear conservation. By understanding how they use their habitat, what places appear to be important for them and how populations change, only then we can arrange for better protection measures.

Bear scare

From the field, Polar bears,

WWF staff take measurements and genetic samples from a dead polar bear cub found on the beach during a community visit in the Russian Arctic. Photo: Tatiana Baeva / WWF-Russia

In many parts of the Arctic, polar bears and people live in close proximity. WWF staff take measurements and genetic samples from a polar bear cub that had apparently died of natural causes near a village. The bear was found on the beach during a community visit in the Russian Arctic. Photo: Tatiana Baeva / WWF-Russia


 
This August, eight polar bears came searching for food in four Russian Arctic villages. WWF set out to keep both local people and bears safe.
By Tatiana Baeva, WWF-Russia
“Just imagine: you wake up in the morning, go to the bathroom to take a shower, and see a polar bear staring at you through the window! It is important for WWF that neither people nor bears suffer from such encounters”, explains Victor Nikiforov, head of WWF-Russia’s Bear Patrol project.
As Victor explains, the solution is to show to bears that human settlements are dangerous. To do that, local WWF Bear Patrols scare the bears away by waving large sticks and hitting them with rubber bullets. Don’t worry – rubber bullets don’t hurt the bears. To them, they are a small nuisance, like being hit by a pea. But they understand that the place is strange and unsafe and prefer to leave.
Experts from WWF, together with the local administration, visited four Arctic villages. By the time WWF arrived, the polar bears had already peacefully left the villages on their own. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes such visits results in tragic events. The team offered tips on how to deal with approaching polar bears.
It is best to avoid the encounter altogether. But what to do if the worst happens and the bear is already close to you?
“Always, when there’s a chance of meeting a polar bear, have a long, thick stick with you. If a bear approaches you and it is too late to hide, the stick will help save your life. At first, the bear may pretend to attack you without actually doing so. This is called a “false attack [or bluff charge]”. When that happens, don’t wait for the real attack. Position the stick so that it hangs over the bear, but don’t strike. Usually, this scares the bear away and it leaves”, explains Victor.
WWF and the local administration will publish a brochure for local communities with tips on avoiding and scaring away polar bears.
WWF supplied all the four villages with rubber bullets, just in time. Shortly after the team left, polar bears again approached one of the settlements. This time, both bears and people remained safe – the Polar Bear Patrol quickly and safely drove the bears away.

A lifetime in two weeks

From the field, ,

Labrador, Canada

Tat, Sue and Paninnguaq in Torngat Mountains National Park, Labrador, Canada.


WWF took part in the 2014 “Students on Ice” expedition from Arctic Canada to Greenland, both sponsoring students, and helping give the students useful skills. WWF staff member Sue Novotny blogged from the expedition.
It feels like we wrapped a lifetime of experiences into 2 weeks. We bobbed in the water with a polar bear, hiked mountains few people have visited, saw the evidence of climate change first hand, heard the stories of elders, and made lifelong friends.
Now we’ve all headed home, but both students and staff are keeping the expedition spirit going with the busy sharing of photos, videos and well-wishes on Facebook. I spoke with our WWF-sponsored students one last time before we parted ways (but hopefully not for long!).

What was your favourite part of the expedition?

Paninnguaq:
I really loved to see Canadian people [who] really look like Greenlanders. I really saw the connection between our people, and I’m surprised that we aren’t connected that much as people.
Tat:
When we were on the land exploring Greenland. It was very exciting to perform [in the community centre in Nanortalik].

Excerpt from “This is who we are”, written and performed by Tat on the expedition

 

It’s a beautiful scenery
I live in the arctic, complicated, beautiful
…We go hunting often going with no flow
Loving, caring, all we know
Inuk pride, broken lives, fixing struggles
Adapting, catching, nothing but survival rights
No hate, living cycles, crafts and arts
This is who we are.

 

Highlights from Greenland, including Tat’s performance:

What did you learn?

Tat:
I learned that there are many opportunities if you step in.
Paninnguaq:
I learned a lot about nature, vegetation and birds in Canada, but also in my own country.

What’s next?

Tat:
I’m probably going to school.
Paninnguaq:
To get more life experience. I want to be able to write books. This helped me to think about Greenland’s future and how it can look.

Sea ice stories

From the field, , ,

Students on Ice, checking out ice. Photo: Sue Novotny / WWF

Students on Ice, checking out ice. Photo: Sue Novotny / WWF


WWF was part of a “Students on Ice” expedition from Arctic Canada to Greenland, both sponsoring students, and helping give the students useful skills. WWF staff member Sue Novotny is blogging from the expedition.
While talking with the students about climate change and the future of sea ice, I asked them to raise their hands if they saw sea ice for the first time on this expedition. Over half of the 85  students were new to sea ice, and to the Arctic.
Along with them, I saw sea ice for the first time last week – hundreds of bergy bits at dusk. We’ve since encountered much more ice, from enormous icebergs to calving glaciers to a thin stip of fast ice under the water at high tide, seeming to glow like a modern art installation.
Then I asked who lived in a place where the sea freezes up every winter – 25 more hands. These students from northern Canada and Greenland shared their stories about life with sea ice.

One student said it’s a difficult time to be away from home, because it’s when his family goes out to the floe edge to hunt.

Another talked about jumping a snowmobile across cracks in the ice during the summer breakup. (I asked if this was dangerous. The answer: it’s fun!)

And another said moving his snowmobile from the ice onto the land is a sign that spring is coming.

Sea ice is clearly part of life and full of life. And viewed from satellites over time, it almost looks like a living thing.

This video elicited some gasps from the audience. Within their lifetimes, both the extent of the ice and the amount of multi-year ice has shrunk dramatically. What ice is left is pushed by prevailing currents to northern Greenland and Canada – the “Last Ice Area“. Ice models project that this will be the only place sea ice remains in the summer by 2040.
Many of these students will go on to be scientists, advocates, and leaders in Greenland and Canada. They’ll be making decisions on the Arctic’s future. If they want to focus on regions that will be important to the Arctic in the decades to come and beyond, the Last Ice Area is a good place to start.

Putting the green in Greenland – and the rap in rapport

From the field, ,

WWF is part of a “Students on Ice” expedition from Arctic Canada to Greenland, both sponsoring students, and helping give the students useful skills. WWF staff member Sue Novotny is on board, and is sending blogs about the expedition.boat prow
After four days exploring Labrador, southern Greenland seems both familiar and new to the students. The mountains are more jagged, icebergs are far more frequent, and valleys have turned to glaciers. But as we rounded the corner of a fjord, a sight new to almost everyone on board – Greenland’s ice cap, rising almost as high as the enormous mountains.
When Students on Ice visited this site five years ago, the glacier was calving directly into the water. Today, we hiked about a kilometer from shore to the glacier’s edge. The retreat has been so rapid that the area uncovered by ice is still scrubbed free of vegetation.
green mountainOur next stop, “Paradise Valley”, is one of the few places in Greenland where trees can be found.  The plants here are now familiar – willow and birch – but far more like shrubs than the tiny plants we saw in Labrador. Paninnguaq (the WWF student from Greenland) was excited to find a much larger piece of birch than she’s seen in her hometown of Sisimiut, above the Arctic Circle. She’s now busy whittling it down to create a traditional Greenlandic toy.
Finally, we dock in Nanortalik, Greenland’s southernmost town. In Greenlandic, the name means “place of the polar bears”, but there are no bears here today, just a collection of colourful little houses on a rocky landscape. greenland villageCulturally, the northern students feel at home here. Despite the occasional language barrier, the students traded performances with the local teenagers, from rap to Inuit games, throat singing and drum dancing, and Greenlandic rock. Tat (the WWF student from Nunavut) has been writing his own rap songs in English and Inuktitut, and performed publicly for the very first time for the Students on Ice. His second performance was to an appreciative crowd in Nanortalik’s youth centre. It’s good to see Inuit youth sharing their culture like this, maintaining ties stretching back thousands of years.

Torngat memories and memorials

From the field, ,

Moravian band welcomes the Students on Ice ship to Labrador. Photo: Sue Novotny

Moravian band welcomes the Students on Ice ship to Labrador. Photo: Sue Novotny


WWF is part of a “Students on Ice” expedition from Arctic Canada to Greenland, both sponsoring students, and helping give the students useful skills. WWF staff member Sue Novotny is on board, and is sending blogs about the expedition.
Traditionally, ships visiting this part of Labrador would be met with an incongruous sight – a brass band dressed in traditional Inuit clothing. The bands are an artifact of Moravian missionaries who came to the region in the late 1700s. According to the staff of Torngat Mountains National Park, it’s been decades since these bands welcomed a ship. But today our zodiacs arrived at basecamp to trumpets, horns and trombones playing Moravian songs unchanged for over 100 years.
Torngat’s basecamp is home to researchers, park managers, bear guards and visitors. Paninnguaq, our WWF scholarship winner from Sisimiut,      Greenland, shared some of her highlights from basecamp:
“I loved that it looked like home. Mountainous, and the same vegetation. But [home doesn’t have] ice blocks on the shore. charI got to use an ice table for  lunch [fresh char and bannock, cooked by elders on the beach]. I loved that we went to a waterfall to get water for our bottles.  And to hear elders talk about how they were moved from their communities. It was very emotional. We really understood what it had been like.”
Few people get a chance to visit Canada’s northern parks, and I doubt many have been welcomed so warmly, by so many people. Even fewer have seen  what we’ve seen over the past few days.
We made a solemn visit to the remote village of Killiniq, left abandoned in 1978 by forced relocation of its residents.
We climbed a mountain that hadn’t been climbed in the memories of any of the elders we met, for a view of the landscape that hasn’t been seen for untold years. And as the brass band played the ship off, perhaps another first – a rainbow appeared, and at the end, a mountaintop inukshuk. A perfect way to say goodbye to Canada before sailing to Greenland.

An Arctic “melting pot”

From the field, Polar bears, ,

WWF is part of a “Students on Ice” expedition from Arctic Canada to Greenland, both sponsoring students, and helping give the students useful skills. WWF staff member Sue Novotny is on board, and is sending blogs about the expedition.
Komaktaviq Fjord, Labrador. Torngat Mountains National Park
Here on the Labrador coast we are seeing and hearing of the mixing of nature that’s beginning to occur with climate change.fur
First we see signs of polar bears – they’re not showing themselves today but the evidence is everywhere. Within a half hour hike, we come across a napping spot here, some fresh scat there, and a tuft of fur.
In the Torngat Mountains, where the bears far outnumber people, visitors are strongly advised to hire one of the local Inuit bear guards. The guards know the region inside and out, and are experienced in spotting bears, reading their behaviour, and scaring them away long before they can approach a person. Each time we set foot on land, the guards precede us, scouting the hills.
It’s a place that is changing rapidly, says one of the guards from the Torngat base. Armed with a rifle, rubber bullets and a bear banger, he accompanies hikers out on the land all summer long. He’s seeing black bears, moose and more southern birds in greater numbers, ever further north. They’ve also observed polar bears catching fish in much the same way grizzlies do.

With the gguarduards keeping lookout, we picked our way to the top of a deceptively steep mountain. Happily, neither black bears nor polar bears seem interested in tangling with our group of 130 people.From our vantage point on top of the mountain, we could see for who knows how many kilometres in every direction – but no bears in sight.

Where polar bears in town are a ho-hum experience

From the field, Polar bears, ,

tatega (sposored student) pic

Tatega, Pond Inlet student sponsored by WWF


Tatega, or Tat, is one of two WWF scholarship winners on the 2014 Students on Ice Arctic expedition currently making its way toward Greenland by boat. He is a high school student in the northern Canadian community of Pond Inlet, deep in the Arctic, fringing the Last Ice Area.
He’s currently far to the south of his home, in Torngat Mountains National Park, Labrador. Signs of polar bears are everywhere here. We’ve found countless piles of scat, a lemming warren torn apart by a hungry bear, and the skeletons of seals dragged onto the beach.
Today, we encountered two polar bears in the fuzzy flesh – luckily, from the safe distance of our ship. It was the first bear viewing for most students, but Tat is no stranger to these Arctic icons.
“[We see them] really often [in Pond Inlet]. When we go on the ice, we often see one at the floe edge .”
Do they ever come into town?
“Yeah, in summertime, but not very often.”
What happens?
“When polar bears try to come into town, the people in town make it run away. The town talks about it on the radio and someone scares it away. It happens once in a while.”