FIRST NATIONS RESIDENTS LIVING ALONG THE JAMES BAY COAST IN NORTHERN ONTARIO HAVE REPORTED AN ALARMING RISE IN POLAR BEAR SIGHTINGS.
Encounters with animals are on the rise
One was spotted rummaging through heaps of trash at a dump site in front of gobsmacked residents.
Another rambled dangerously close to a residential community, but a volunteer firefighter and local police used their vehicles and sirens to scare it away.
Over the past year or so, First Nations residents living along the James Bay coast in northern Ontario have reported an alarming rise in polar bear sightings. Experts suspect climate change and the related change in ice floes and currents are likely driving the phenomenon.
“It’s a public safety concern,” said Jonathon Solomon, grand chief of the Mushkegowuk Tribal Council, which represents several Cree First Nations in the region.
“You see the changes … in the travel patterns of bears. They’re coming inland. Ten years ago, there might’ve been a rare one, but not the way things have been (recently).”
In response, the council is sponsoring a workshop this week in Fort Albany First Nation to give Mushkegowuk environmental stewards advice on how to deal with future polar bear encounters.
The workshop is being administered by Karen Cummings, manager of the Polar Bear Habitat, a polar bear reserve in Cochrane, Ont. She said Monday she was aware of at least eight polar bear encounters since December 2015 in places like Moose Factory, Kashechewan and Attawapiskat — all places that rarely see polar bears.
“No one has a crystal ball. No one knows if it’ll happen again. But we suspect it will,” she said by phone as she was making her way up the winter ice road to Fort Albany.
Cummings said she and safety consultant Andy McMullen of BearWise will be giving advice to local residents on ways to deter polar bears from encroaching on communities — including the use of bangers, flares and rubber bullets — and how to safely lead them out of town.
In the event bears keep returning, residents will also get instruction in how to live-trap bears. Cummings was hauling a three-metrelong culvert trap on a trailer Monday to distribute to the community. Four more are being built, she said.
Leslie Pine, a resident of Moose Factory at the south end of James Bay, recalled how he, his wife and motherin-law watched with amazement in December 2015 as a polar bear picked through pieces of trash at the local dump.
The “poor bear,” he said, hardly had any fat on it. “He looked pretty skinny and sick-looking. He was a really young bear. It was probably his first year being away from his mother,” he said.
“It was so rare for a polar bear to come this far down for food.”
After consulting with the local band council and chief, police shot and killed the bear.
The bear was handled respectfully and its skull, bones and claws were used for ceremonial purposes, Pine said.
Brandon Spence, a volunteer firefighter in Kashechewan, described to the CBC last July a tense encounter with a polar bear roaming the streets in his community.
Spence parked his truck on one side of the road, while police parked on the other side.
“It started to come towards us,” he recalled. “The police started to play their sirens and lights. So the bear stopped and turned around, and went back to the school portables … The bear was pushing the fence for a good five or 10 minutes, knocked the fence down and took off.”
The bear returned the next day and was shot by police. After the bear was blessed, it was eaten by locals, he said.
The polar bears that have been spotted in these James Bay communities belong to the Southern Hudson Bay sub-population, said Brandon Laforest, a senior specialist in Arctic species and ecosystems with the World Wildlife Fund-Canada.
While the sub-population’s numbers have been stable, the bears have been getting thinner, Laforest said. With diminishing sea ice, the bears have been spending more time on land, away from their primary food source — seals.
Some bears will ride the ice as long as they can in search of marine mammals, which could take them further south than they intended, he said.
The conflict between polar bears and residential communities has been growing not only in Canada but in Alaska, Greenland and Russia, he added.
This points to the need for communities to make sure their landfills are properly fenced in and for residents to properly store their garbage, a spokeswoman for Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry said Monday.
“Public safety is a priority. As a last resort, black bears and polar bears can also be shot in defence of property,” she said.