Leading experts on polar bears expect the population in Churchill to decline to just a handful of bears by 2035. Modeling by Dr. Andrew Derocher and two mathematicians shows that the increasing ice-free season on Hudson Bay will soon reach a tipping point, with 20 to 30% of Manitoba's bears dying off every year. By 2035, there won't be enough bears to sustain a breeding population in the town now known as “The Polar Bear Capital of the World.”
Churchill's polar bears are forced ashore each summer when the ice on Hudson Bay melts. But the ice is melting sooner each year and freezing later, leaving them with a shorter hunting season.
"We can say with a very great deal of confidence that, sadly, the Western Hudson Bay population will be non-viable within 25 or 30 years," said Dr. Ian Stirling, a leading polar bear scientist and member of PBI's Advisory Council, in an interview with the Winnipeg Free Press.
Stirling said that the average polar bear eats 43 ringed seals a year. Missing out on only two of those meals every year is enough to cause a polar bear's body weight to decline to the point where females produce underweight cubs or no cubs at all.
Robert Buchanan, president of PBI, cautioned that it would be fatal to give up on polar bears, which he describes as a "sentinel species" that draws attention to the entire Arctic ecosystem.
Canada, which has 65 per cent of the world's estimated 15,000 to 25,000 polar bears, has the potential to lead the world in the fight against climate change, he said.
"We have to provide hope," he said. "If Canada doesn't get it, then the rest of the world won't get it."
Manitoba declared polar bears a threatened species in 2008. Derocher and other biologists are urging Canada to follow suit this year.
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