Western Montanans have long known the challenges of dealing with bears that rummage through trash and wreak havoc on chicken coops. But lately, our neighbors to the distant north have been dealing with a growing bear problem – and their bruins aren’t your garden-variety Montana black bear.
They are polar bears, the largest land-based carnivores in the world. Triple the size of most adult black bears and dependent on an all-meat diet, polar bears are increasingly running into trouble with humans in their Arctic environs.
Ironically, the increasing incidence of conflicts between people and polar bears comes as the overall population of the species is shrinking. And both facts ultimately trace to the same cause, says Ian Stirling, author of “Polar Bears: The Natural History of a Threatened Species” and an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
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“The most important single thing in all of this is that the warming of climate is causing the ice to melt for longer periods; and the critical thing for the survival of polar bears is that they have to have access to ice to hunt seals,” said Stirling. “The thing is, a starving bear doesn’t lie down in the shade of a tree. It goes looking for alternative food sources. And where they logically go is to garbage dumps, hunting camps and people.”
Stirling came to Missoula this week to present a keynote speech on Thursday evening at the fourth International Human-Bear Conflicts Workshop, a gathering of professionals and scientists who work to reduce friction between people and bears.
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In an interview with the Missoulian, Stirling said that climate change seems destined to only increase problems between polar bears and humans in the future, even as wildlife biologists, entrepreneurs and everyday folks in most bear-inhabited regions of North America are finding ways to reduce such conflicts.
“What we’re seeing in some places now is more and more polar bears coming into villages,” he said. “They’re in poorer body condition, they haven’t been able to feed as well, and when you get a hungry polar bear and humans running into each other in open country, one of them is going to end up dead. Most people traveling in the Arctic are armed, so it’s usually the polar bear.”
Stirling would know. For 37 years, he has studied polar bears throughout the Canadian Arctic with the Canadian Wildlife Service. His long-term studies of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay confirmed the negative effects of climate warming on their habitat and numbers.
He said that the solution to the growing problem is hardly simple.
“Some people ask why these bears can’t just adapt back to being land bears again; but they can’t do that in the time available,” he said, noting that modern-day polar bears adapted to their current habitat and diet over the course of more than 15,000 years.
“They’re very large mammals specified to a specific habitat. There isn’t the food that would support them on land. You’re not going to turn around 15,000 years of evolutionary time in the 100 years or so that it’ll take before we don’t have ice in the Arctic.”
In fact, most models say that the Arctic will likely be ice-free at least during summer months within 30 years. That will dramatically transform the hunting and foraging opportunities for polar bears, which live largely on a diet of seals that they catch on ice floes.
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And while polar bears are the most visible creatures to be affected by these changes, their decline could resonate across the entire ecosystem.
“People ask what it matters if we lose some polar bears, and my response is: It’s really quite significant because we’re not just losing them, we’re losing a system,” he said. “Everything that’s evolved up there over the last million or two (million) years will be gone or replaced.”
This isn’t the first time that polar bears have been threatened by human activity. In the last century, hunting of the bears from airplanes was decimating numbers. That trend reversed after Congress passed the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act in 1972, which among other things banned such hunts.
The difference now, though, is that there is no “silver bullet” to reverse the climate changes that are affecting polar bear habitat.
“I am very exercised about the need for change in a whole number of ways,” said Stirling. “One is localized for all of us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels to the degree we can. But our governments on the local, national and most importantly on the international level have to address climate warming. There’s no two ways about it. There are huge consequences for humans at large, and if we don’t do that we’re going to pay big prices.”
In the meantime, Stirling said he aims to spread the word in Arctic communities about the kind of conflict deterrence strategies already employed in areas where humans and bears have long experienced conflicts.
“Short term, we need to address how to deal with a problem bear in your backyard, because this is a less familiar issue in polar bear country than in places like Montana,” he said. “But long term, if polar bears are to survive, we need to address the broader issues. There is no other way.”
Reporter Joe Nickell can be reached at 523-5358, jnickell@missoulian.com or on NickellBag.com.
