POLAR BEAR
VIRAL VIDEO SHOWS POLAR BEAR ‘STARVING’ BECAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE. OR MAYBE NOT.
An emaciated polar bear digging through garbage was quickly branded around the world as proof of the ecological horrors of climate change. Even Catherine McKenna, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, wrote in a tweet: “THIS is what climate change looks like.”
But ask the people who actually spend their time around polar bears — Arctic biologists and the Inuit — and it quickly emerges that all is not what it seems.
BEAR MIGHT HAVE BEEN DISEASED
“The video shows what appears to be an old male in declining health, but clear clinical signs of starvation aren’t obvious ( e. g. convulsions),” said longtime polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher in an email. In a series of tweets, Arctic wildlife biologist Jeff Higdon speculated that the animal could be suffering from an aggressive form of bone cancer. “That bear is starving, but (in my opinion) it’s not starving because the ice suddenly disappeared and it could no longer hunt seals,” he wrote, noting that bears routinely survive long stretches of icefree water during the summer. “It’s far more likely that it is starving due to health issues,” he added. However, noted University of Alberta polar bear researcher Ian Stirling disputed that it was an older bear, noting the lack of scarring around the ani- mal’s neck. In an email, Stirling added that it’s impossible to know for sure what caused the bear’s emaciation, but it “is what a starving bear would look like, regardless of the cause.”
THE BEAR LIVES IN AN AREA WHERE POPULATIONS ARE DOING WELL
Climate change is definitely very bad for the future of polar bears. But for the time being, it’s having varied effects. Depending on where they live, some bears are getting utterly decimated, while others are thriving. Notably, the emaciated polar bear quite likely lives in an area where polar bears are doing rather well. According to data collected by the federal government, polar bears along the entire west coast of Baffin Island are “stable.” On the southeastern side of the island (around the Nunavut capital of Iqaluit) polar bears have even experienced a “likely increase.” It’s only on the island’s northeastern corner that polar bears are suspected to be in decline.
EMACIATED POLAR BEARS ARE NOT NEW
A caribou or a moose is never allowed to get this skinny: Long before it gets close to starvation, a predator has usually turned them into a meal. But if a polar bear doesn’t drown or get shot, it’s most likely going to end up looking like the bear in the photo. “Polar bears, they don’t have natural enemies, so when they die, it’s of starvation,” Steven Amstrup, chief scientist at Polar Bears International, said in 2015. “Bears can respond to improved conditions: We’ve followed bears that went from bone racks to obese over a few months,” said Derocher.
ACTIVISTS TOOK THESE PHOTOS
These images aren’t the work of a scientist, an impartial documentarian or even a concerned bystander. They are part of a calculated public relations exercise by SeaLegacy, an organization whose stated purpose is to capture photos that drive “powerful conservation wins.” The group dispatched five expeditions in 2017, all with the goal to “trigger public and policy support for sustainable ocean solutions.” Terry Audla is president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, an advocacy organization representing all Canadian Inuit. In a Sunday tweet, he called the photos a “stunt” that represented a “complete disservice to climate change science.”
SEALEGACY ITSELF DOESN’T KNOW WHY BEAR IS STARVING
In an Instagram post, SeaLegacy co- founder Crist i na Mittermeier called the bear the “Face of Climate Change.” Nevertheless, she acknowledged “we don’t know what caused this animal to starve.” In an interview with The Washi ngton Post, SeaLegacy’s Paul Nicklen was similarly reported as having “no definitive proof that the bear’s condition was connected” to climate change. As Higdon noted, SeaLegacy should have contacted a Nunavut conservation officer to euthanize the bear and submit its body for a necropsy to determine the definitive cause of its ill health. “The narrative of the story might have turned out quite different if they had,” he wrote.
Critics have noted there’s an obvious flaw with pointing to a starving bear as the “face of climate change.” By the same l ogic, Canada’s many healthy polar bears could be used as mascots for climate change denial. “Arguing ( climate change) is real because of a video of one sick bear is like claimi ng that it is a hoax because yesterday it snowed i n southern Texas,” read a tweet by Université de Sherbrooke biologist Marco Festa- Bianchet. Derocher noted that Baffin Island polar bear populations are expected to fall off a cliff in the coming years. “However, the key is population monitoring and you need to integrate across many individuals to obtain meaningful insight,” he wrote.