Arctic Economics

Stefansson and the bear

Almost 100 years ago the ethnologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson went hunting for food while traveling across the sea ice with a small party:

Great narwhal video

Spectacular video of narwal following a lead in the ice, from the BBC:  'Arctic unicorns' in icy display

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution.

Undernourished polar bears

From Arctic Focus: Study confirms what is already known: the Arctic polar bear is in trouble  Focus reports on research into bear nuitrition in the Beaufort Sea (off of Alaska and Canada):

During April and May of 1985, 1986, 2005 and 2006 Cherry and his team used tranquilizer darts in order to immobilize the bear in order to measure the ratio of urea to creatine in their bloodstream.  When an animal is fasting this ratio will be low, something that is normally only seen in male polar bears during the spring mating season.  During the 1985 and 1986 studies showed the number of bears fasting was 9.6 and 10.5.  In 2005 and 2006 this number had reached 21.4 and 29.3 percent, respectively.

How likely is it that polar bears will become extinct?

In 2007, U.S. Geological Service (USGS) scientists looked at the future of the polar bear throughout its range: Forecasting the Range-wide Status of Polar Bears at Selected Times in the 21st Century.  The USGS report points to high probabilities of extinction for the bear in most of its current range within the next 100 years.  "High" gets defined a little more later in this post.  The bears are most likely to survive in Canada's northern islands.  

Sea ice and ringed seals are essential to the bear's survival.  A large part of the USGS results are driven by expected reductions in the availability of both.   Here's a readable paper by two Canadian bear scientists that explains why the sea ice and ringed seals are so important: Melting under pressure. 

I posted about the USGS report a few weeks ago: The polar bear's last stand.  In this post I'd like to explore a little more what the report has to say about the efficacy of possible policy responses.  I'm not going to talk about greenhouse gas policy.  However important the polar bear is, greenhouse gas policy isn't being driven by it alone.  I would like to look at the potential for local policy actions: normal game management applied to polar bears, oil and gas and shipping mitigation measures, tourism management, and so on.

Cultural disconnects and polar bear management

In Canada, polar bear management is in the hands of the provinces and territories.  In the northern territory of Nunavut, management is shared by the territory and local user groups. 

Martha Dowsley of Lakehead University gives a nice introduction to Canadian polar bear management arrangements in Developing multi-level institutions from top-down ancestors.  In this title, "multi-level" refers to the involvement of different levels of government in polar bear management; "Developing... from top-down ancestors" refers to the evolution of multi-level management from an earlier single-level national or regional management regime.

Dowsley and George Wenzel of McGill, look at joint territorial-local management in Nunavut when the two levels are divided by cultural differences, in "The Time of the Most Polar Bears": A Co-management Conflict in Nunavut.  "Co-management" refers to the shared territorial-local management.  

Here's the (heavily annotated and somewhat reorganized) abstract:                     

The polar bear's last stand

If Steve Amstrup and his co-authors are right, the polar bears may be making their last stand in the Canadian high Arctic in 100 years: Polar Bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea II: Demography and Population Growth in Relation to Sea Ice Conditions. 

Amstrup et al., working for the U.S. Geological Survey, grouped the world's 19 polar bear sub-populations into four general ecoregions - shown in the figure below (the two-letter codes identify the different subpopulations):

The old aerial polar bear hunt in Alaska

From the late 1940s until the early 1970s guides in Alaska took their clients sport hunting for polar bears from airplanes.  At times the planes were used to herd the bears towards the waiting hunters. 

The hunt and some of its economics were described by U.S. delegations to early (1965-1974) international meetings on the status of the polar bear.  I think that much of the following material was prepared by Jack Lentfer, a government bear biologist who attended these meetings. 

By way of orientation, the hunts were originating in six or seven small communities from the tip of Alaska's nose, and up along its forehead, and being flown into the Chukchi Sea and the western Beaufort Sea.  Little Diomede Island, which you will read about, is right in the Bering Strait.

The aerial sport harvest began sometime in the late 1940s.  Before that most hunting had been by Alaska Natives for subsistence and income (Polar Bear Management in Alaska; Jack Lentfer, Third International Conference on Bears, 1974):

How to Cook a Polar Bear

Nathan Myhrvold went to Greenland and wrote abut the trip in Freakonomics (Eating Polar Bears Is Okay in Greenland).  Myhrvold explored the glacial fjords, got up on the ice cap, sampled the local beer, and tried braised polar bear ("...it was coarse textured meat, probably from the leg, and Salik was right, it was delicious.").

From Alaska to Greenland (legally) and probably in Russia (illegally for now) northern Natives hunt polar bears for food and materials.  Sales of polar bear parts are allowed subject to restrictions that vary from place to place.  The Canadian Inuit web site of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami says that "Polar bear meat is usually baked or boiled in a soup or stew....Cook polar bear meat and add potatoes and carrots for a healthy stew. Serve with bannock and a glass of milk or unsweetened juice." (Arctic Wildlife)  "Flip" at the blog "Suitably Flip" dug out four or five more detailed recipes from northern sources for this post: The Lumbering Delicacy: Tasy Polar Bear Recipes.

Polar Bear Control

Sometimes in the Arctic man is not the top predator:

A number of Eskimo on the Alaskan coast show frightful scars obtained in contests with them in winter. One man, who came on board the Corwin [U.S. Revenue Cutter active in the Arctic and Bering Sea in the late 19th Century.  The storyteller, the anthropologist Edward Nelson, traveled on her at times - Ben], had the entire skin and flesh torn from one side of his head and face including the eye and ear, yet had escaped and recovered. One incident was related to me which occurred near Point Hope during the winter of 1880-'81. Men went out from Point Hope during one of the long winter nights to attend to their seal nets, which were set through holes in the ice. While at work near each other, one of the men heard a bear approaching over the frosty snow, and having no weapon but a small knife, and the bear being between him and the shore, he threw himself upon his back on the ice and waited. The bear came up and for a few moments smelled about the man from head to foot, and finally pressed his cold nose against the man's lips and nose and sniffed several times; each time the terrified Eskimo held his breath until, as he afterwards said, his lungs nearly burst. The bear suddenly heard the other man at work, and listening for a moment he started towards him at a gallop, while the man he left sprang to his feet and ran for his life for the village and reached it safely. At midday, when the sun had risen a little above the horizon, a large party went out to the spot and found the bear finishing his feast upon the other hunter and soon dispatched him. Cases similar to this occur occasionally all along the coast where the bear is found in winter."  (Nelson was an Army signals officer stationed in St. Michael, Alaska, in the 1870s and 80s).

Kaktovik is a small Inupiat village on the coast of the Beaufort Sea. Kaktovik residents participate in annual bowhead whale hunts, and slaughter the animals at a spot on the coast near the airport.  The remains attract polar bears to feed, and people drive down to watch them.  The bears also wander along the shore and into town.  This guy got out of his truck.  Comments on this post at other sites suggest that a professional photographer is involved from the sophistication of the tripod leaning against the truck (TractorByNet - scroll to bottom).  I've been researching this somewhat since I first posted; my guess at this point is that this guy is a Kaktovik resident working as a guide for professional photographers and that he is used to being around bears.  This may have been taken near the bowhead carcasses, but I'm no longer as certain of that:

This is one of a whole series of shots, here.  It looks like they went around this truck and a second one.  I don't know how the guy got away, but he did.

Everyone wants a piece of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Parties on both sides of the U.S. polar bear listing debate are lining up to challenge the Interior Department's decision to list the Beaufort and Chukchi Sea populations as threatened.

Jessica Ferrell of the Marten Law Group, an environmental law firm, explains what's aggravating who: Polar Opposites: State of Alaska, Hunting and Environmental Groups Challenge Polar Bear Listing.