![]() ![]() "Climate change deniers tried to come at polar bears because I think if they felt they could turn the tide of public opinion about that relationship between sea ice loss and polar bears, then the whole issue of climate change would just somehow unravel," said Derocher. Those complexities have been exploited by people arguing against the scientific consensus that global warming is real and caused mostly by the combustion of fossil fuels. Polar bear habitat includes sea ice, which has been changing across the Arctic due to human-caused global warming. "The challenge is we have also very good information that at least three populations of polar bears have declined due to the loss of sea ice and we suspect that that pattern will just increase." "We've got more bears now than we did in 1973," he said. Subpopulations provide a more nuanced pictureīiologist Andrew Derocher says the health of the polar bear is "a complex issue." ![]() While melting sea ice is changing polar bears' habitat and will continue to do so, for now, some subpopulations of the animal have rebounded, and Pottle worries his experience as a hunter and guide is not being taken seriously. "Half the time you don't know what you're going onto." "One time we could read the ice and we had an understanding of how it formed," he said. Water that used to freeze by November in the 1980s now freezes in early January and melts in April rather than May or June, he said. In Nunatsiavut, a dozen polar bears can be legally hunted each year. In 1973, Arctic countries from around the world signed an agreement to conserve polar bears internationally, and in 2008 the United States listed the polar bear as a threatened species Canada listed the animal as a species of special concern in 2011.įor Pottle there are more urgent signs of climate change than polar bears, like the impacts on hunting and trapping. ![]() He said activists fighting against polar bear hunting make things increasingly difficult. Polar bear harvesters used to earn as much as $20,000 for a hide, said Pottle, but now would be lucky to get $5,000. He's witnessed changes in sea ice over the decades - freezing later, thawing earlier, and staying slushy. Derrick Pottle is based in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, in northern Labrador. ![]()
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