Study: Polar Bear Population ‘Not in Crisis’

Climate change doomsayers have for years claimed that declining polar bear populations in the Arctic are a consequence of manmade global warming.

But a new study has found that the bear population in part of Canada is larger than many scientists thought and might actually be growing.

In 2004, Environment Canada researchers concluded that the number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay had dropped 22 percent since 1984, to 935 bears, and they estimated that by 2011, a continuing decrease would bring the number down to 610.

The Hudson Bay region is considered a bellwether for how polar bears are faring elsewhere in the Arctic, according to Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail.

The decrease, the scientists asserted, was due to warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin the bears’ ability to hunt.

“That sparked worldwide concern about the future of the bears and prompted the Canadian and American governments to introduce legislation to protect them,” The Globe and Mail reported.

The World Wildlife Fund even stated in 2008: "If current warming trends continue unabated, scientists believe that polar bears will be vulnerable to extinction within the next century."

But a survey released on April 4 by the Government of Nunavut — a federal territory of Canada — shows that the number of bears is now 1,013 and could be higher.

“The bear population is not in crisis as people believed,” said Drikus Gissing, Nunavut’s director of wildlife management. “There is no doom and gloom.”

He added that the media in Canada have led people to believe that polar bears are endangered, but “they are not.”

He estimated that there are about 25,000 polar bears in Canada’s Arctic region, and “that’s likely the highest [number] there has ever been.”

Nunavut, which is the size of Western Europe, is home to only about 32,000 people.