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For years, people living in Canada’s north have reported an increasing numbers of polar bears on shore, venturing into communities and encountering humans.
Researchers theorized the bears were starving, forced onshore due to shrinking sea ice in search of something to eat, possibly people.
When the bears were forced off the ice, they also lost access to their preferred food source, ringed seal cubs, which live and den on the ice.
But an 11-year-study by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan and University of Manitoba suggests that while shrinking sea ice plays a role, it’s not what people thought.
“What we saw is, it wasn’t the skinny bears coming around,” said Douglas Clark, a professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the U of S.
“What we saw is the longer they were off the ice, the more likely all bears of all body condition, classes and all ages and sexes were to come around,” Clark told CBC’s The Morning Edition.
In other words, the bears were running into people more often because they were on shore more frequently.
Clark first started monitoring the bears 15 years ago, installing trail cameras in several locations in Wapusk National Park on the edge of Hudson Bay, near Churchill, Man.
Parks Canada had noticed the bears seemed to be attracted to some new field camps, and wanted to figure out what was going on and whether the bears were seeking people out for — or as — food.
Clark, a polar bear scientist, was a former park warden with more than 30 years of experience working with and studying the polar bears from the Hudson Bay area.
He and fellow researchers eventually compiled 11 years of data, observing more than 500 polar bear visits, measuring sea ice and comparing that information to nearby human activity to get a sense of why the bears were having more encounters with people.
Their observations, published recently in Arctic Science, revealed the bears didn’t seem to care about people.
They were simply around humans more often because climate change was shrinking sea ice, forcing them to shore for frequent and extended periods of time and into proximity of the people living and working there.
While some bears were hungry, they didn’t seem to be hunting humans.
“When things go really bad it’s disproportionately really underweight, skinny adult males. Those are very dangerous bears,” Clark said.
“So nutritional stress does play a role. It’s just that it doesn’t appear to be the role that we thought it was, just driving bears en masse desperately into communities.”
Alex Crawford, an assistant professor at the U of M’s department of environment and geography who worked on the research, said it’s important to understand that polar bears haven’t become more predatory toward humans because they aren’t getting enough food.
“As the sea ice declines you’re going to expect the polar bears to interact with humans more because they’re going to spend more time on shore. That’s still true. But it’s not like the ones that are less healthy are going to be more likely to seek out humans,” Crawford said.
Like Clark, Crawford said a starving polar bear that happens upon a person is still extremely dangerous.
“They’re more likely to either seek your food or seek you out as food if they’re desperate.”
Crawford said the research project will continue to compile information on polar bears to see if long-term changes to their habitat and food supply eventually change their behavior.
