The first part of the title is true. The second part is tongue-in-cheek as very few people can get to the Arctic, never mind counting all the polar bears there. That is why eco-alarmists nearly always pick subjects that are either invisible, like CO2, or so remote, like polar bears and coral reefs, that the average citizen could never check their story out to see if it was actually true.
It was in the early 1970s, while I was helping to found Greenpeace in Vancouver, Canada, that it became clear to wildlife biologists that polar bears were severely over-hunted in the Arctic. It had become easy to get there by aircraft, find an Inuit guide, and go home with a big rug to put in front of the fireplace. As a result of this knowledge, all the polar countries, including the U.S. and Canada, came together in 1973 and signed a treaty to end the unrestricted hunting of polar bears. At that time their numbers were estimated to be 6-10,000 animals. Today they are estimated to number between 26-58,000 with a median estimate of 39,000. The polar bear's recovery is one of the most successful conservation efforts during the past century, yet the negative bemoaning continues, usually with a fundraising component.
I speak to audiences of professionals in science, engineering, and business on a regular basis. When I ask how many in the audience have heard of the previously mentioned treaty, rarely do any hands go up. The media and the alarmists preaching extinction and a climate-scorched planet don't want you to know about it, so they don't mention it, as it spoils their doomsday "narrative". They prefer to scare us and our children into a pessimism that is without foundation.
They have been saying for decades the Arctic ice may be gone soon, making it impossible for polar bears to hunt seals in the winter and spring. True, the extent of summer ice has diminished somewhat, but polar bears don't hunt seals in summer. And more open ocean in the Arctic summer means more productivity in the sea, from the plankton at the bottom of the food chain to the krill, fish, and seals that the bears depend on for their survival. The reduction in summer ice may indeed be part of the reason why the polar bear population has grown so large and why they are generally fat and happy today. The winter and spring ice show no sign of diminishing, so the bears my well be in for an abundant coming century.
Canada has close to one-third of the polar bears in the Arctic, mainly around the Arctic Islands and other treeless regions in the northeastern territory of Nunavut. The capital of Nunavut is Iqaluit on the southern tip of Baffin Island, where sits the Nunavut territorial government of the Inuit population of about 65,000. Most of the Inuit live year-round in small remote coastal villages. Due to the growing polar bear population, there have recently been more encounters between Inuit and bears, some of which have been fatal for the humans.
In response to this the Nunavut government developed a draft management plan to allow control of the bear population due to what they consider an overpopulation problem. The government of Canada issued a statement claiming the Nunavut initiative was “not in alignment with scientific evidence" while providing no clue as to what evidence they were referring to.
With a few exceptions the media did not report this development. In September 2019 the Nunavut government passed the Nunavut Polar Bear Co-Management Plan. Not one sentence was reported about this in the major Canadian media. Only one newspaper reported it at all, the Nunatsiaq News in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, population 1,766.
The facts above are why you don't hear as much about polar bears any longer. The bears are thriving, and as usual, good news is no news as it cannot easily be exploited for donations, and it doesn't usually sell many papers. But those of us who really care can sleep easier tonight knowing one more scare story bites the snowdrift.
