Dispel Doomsday Propaganda in DisneyNature’s New Polar Bear ‘Documentary’ – Are You Interested?
Dr. Susan Crockford
In a move that repeats the cooperation of the active organization World Wildlife Fund (WWF) with Netflix that brought us Sir David Attenborough’walrus deception in ‘Our Planet’ which I documented in my latest book, ‘Fall symbol’streaming service DisneyNature participated in the activity organization Polar Bears International (PBI) to create a polar bear ‘documentary’ (called ‘Polar Bear’) which we can say propaganda because they chose to release”cute and unsettling” movie on Earth Day (Friday April 22, 2022). In fact, the two films share the same producer: Alastair Fothergill.
In the case of ‘Our Planet’, WWF banked the series to Netflix to secure the content it wanted; in ‘Polar Bear’ the tables are moved: DisneyNature are paying PBI for support in filming polar bears and providing their biased content, through what they are calling research grants. I think now you know what to expect. However, here is the truth about the state of polar bears in Svalbard, where the movie was filmedand some good news from Western Hudson Bay this year, courtesy of Mike Reimer and his team at Churchill Wild. In short, there is no climate emergency for polar bears yet: hype is based on the old model failed spectacularly and new things depends on old data and climate scenarios are completely improbable (Crockford 2017, 2019; Hausfather and Peters 2020; Molnar et al. 2020).
Conditions of the polar bear Svalbard
In contrast to the messages constructed by the PBI to promote the ‘polar bear will die’ rhetoric, 2021 spring study in Svalbard, Norway shows the bears there have thrived: the body condition of male polar bears is stable and litter sizes for family groups are the same as in 1994 – although the Barents Sea is gone at least six times glacial summer seas such as West Hudson Bay since 1979 (Crockford 2022; Regehr et al. 2016). There has been no decrease in population size since 2004 despite this profound loss of sea ice (Aars 2018; Aars et al. 2017) and the premise of DisneyNature movies in which female polar bears are ‘suffering’ is contracted by scientific data showing the body condition of the female “significant increase from 2004 to 2017 ″ (Lippold et al. 2019: summary).
“Unexpectedly, the body condition of female polar bears from the Barents Sea increased after 2005, even though the sea ice had receded by ∼50% since the late 1990s in the region, and the length of the ice-free season has increased by more than 20 weeks from 1979 to 2013. These changes are also accompanied by a winter retreat of sea ice, which is particularly pronounced in the Barents Sea compared with other Arctic regions. Despite the decline of sea ice in the Barents Sea, polar bears may not lack for food as long as there is sea ice during their peak feeding period. Polar bears feed extensively from April to June when ring seals have cubs and are particularly vulnerable to predation, while predation rates for the rest of the year can be low. ” [Lippold et al. 2019: 988]
Martyn Obbard et al (2016: 29) said basically the same [that “polar bears are likely not lacking food as long as sea ice is present during their peak feeding period“) to explain why the body condition of Southern Hudson Bay polar bears had not declined in lock-step with sea ice declines in recent years. And I have said something very similar – many times – to explain why summer sea ice decline has not had a devastating effect on polar bears (Crockford 2017, 2019, 2022), a conclusion I arrived at from my review of the polar bear literature (including Obbard’s paper).
Good News from Western Hudson Bay
Below is a report on conditions in Western Hudson Bay in 2021 and 2022 from Mike Reimer at Churchill Wild (with his permission, sent 28 March 2022; my bold). The map above shows the location of the lodges mentioned in his note, with the position of Owl River (in blue) added by me (original here is zoomable).
First off, this marks my 40th year of living and working on the Hudson Bay coast where I have spent tens upon thousands of hours in the wilds in close proximity to the great white bears. I would call myself an “observational scientist” untrained and unpaid to make professional peer reviewed edicts on polar bears but feel I have amassed a considerable amount of first hand “data” over the years.
I only share what I’ve seen each summer at our camps on the coast and do not own nor can afford an expensive helicopter and a dart gun to really “get in there” and closely handle the bears to perhaps gain some scientific type knowledge of their ongoing condition.
So here are the facts as we see them in our polar bear world, again strictly observational opinions gleaned from 40 years on the Hudson Bay and surrounding Canadian Arctic regions, I’m not a scientist, I have merely lived with polar bears most of my life!
We operate our expeditions and set our schedules entirely based on the arrival and departure of the polar bears to & from land as they go through their normal cycles. And for 40 years it has never changed, we can pretty much set our clocks/dates around their quasi migratory habits.
Sometime in the first week of July we will see our first polar bear off the ice at our Seal River Lodge; I facetiously like to tell people it’s always July 10th on the second tide give or take a week. Down at Nanuk our other lodge located 300 klms SE of Churchill we usually don’t see much of them till a few weeks later when the last of the sea ice breaks up which has lately been into August.
As for bears back on the ice dates I would have to pick November 10th, and again give or take a week. The bears, as you know, spend the summer loafing about waiting for ice and a chance at seals, whales or whatever else might wash up on the beaches (at Seal River location they’ve become adept at hunting belugas from shore).
Strangely enough this year they arrived off the ice in late July and then seemed to disappear leaving us with almost no bear sightings especially at our Nanuk Lodge location. An aerial recon quickly located large groups (as many as 20 in a “gang”) of bears lounging on the beaches in a high state of lethargic non activity because they were simply TOO FAT to move!! That’s correct, too fat to bother wandering about looking for snacks (berries, grasses, birds, carrion) as the summer wore on. These bears went beyond healthy to being downright obese. In all our seasons here we’ve not seen bears in October/November in such extreme cases of healthful chubbiness. The bears were very happy our guests not so much, lol.
Further to this the moms and cubs observed this spring are in excellent shape even producing a set of triplets which we have not had for a while [apparently Wat’chee Lodge also observed a set of triplets near the Owl River…].
I find the above optimistic sharings not in line with the doom party’s standard line of doom & gloom for our great white bears, so I re-emphasize these are only actual observations. Facts are not scientifically proven facts. But we fully expect our great-grandchildren to provide polar bear tours for decades to come.
Summary: There has been no discernible change in separation and freezing dates over the past 40 years, dozens of bears too fat to move in fall 2021 and two litters of three cubs in March 2022.
Mike’s mention of another litter near the Cu River is corroborated by a report on March 19 by photographer Daniel Coxwho gave? images and video footage to PBI to help them promote the polar bear’s predicted apocalyptic future. See the image reproduced below from this one April 1, 2022 tweet. It’s two litters of triplets in 2022 in West Hudson Bay that have been seen by humans. In that sparse wasteland, how many more broods? did not watched?
I’d say this video from 2019 is still relevant:
Presenter
Aars, J. 2018. Changing polar bear populations: protected, but rapidly losing habitat. Fram Forum Newsletter 2018. Fram Centre, Tromso. Download PDF this (32 mb).
Aars, J., Marques, TA, Lone, K., Anderson, M., Wiig, Ø., Fløystad, IMB, Hagen, SB and Buckland, ST 2017. Number and distribution of polar bears in the western Barents Sea. Polar research 36: 1. 1374125. doi:10.1080 / 17518369.2017.1374125
Crockford, SJ 2017. Test the hypothesis that regular sea ice cover of 3-5 mkm2 leads to a decline of more than 30% in polar bear population size (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprint January 19, 2017. Doi: 10.7287 / peerj.preprints.2737v1 Open access. https://peerj.com/preprints/2737/
Crockford, SJ 2019. The polar bear disaster has never happened. Global Warming Policy Fund, London. Available in paperback and eBooks formats.
Crockford, SJ 2022. Status of Polar Bears in 2021. Note 29 of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. pdf this.
Hausfather, Z. and Peters, GP 2020. Emissions – misleading ‘business as usual’ story [“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy”]. Nature 577: 618-620.
Lippold, A., Bourgeon, S., Aars, J., Andersen, M., Polder, A., Lyche, JL, Bytingsvik, J., Jenssen, BM, Derocher, AE, Welker, JM and Routti, H. 2019. Transient trends of persistent organic pollutants in Barents Sea polar bears (Ursus maritimus) associated with changes in feeding habits and body condition. Environmental Science and Technologyy 53 (2): 984-995.
Molnár, PK, Bitz, CM, Holland, MM, Kay, JE, Penk, SR and Amstrup, SC 2020. The length of the fasting season places a time limit on the existence of polar bears globally. Nature Climate change 10: 732-738. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0818-9
Obbard, ME, Cattet, MRI, Howe, EJ, Middel, KR, Newton, EJ, Kolenosky, GB, Abraham, KF and Greenwood, CJ 2016. Body condition trends in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from the South Hudson Bay subpopulation associated with sea ice changes. Arctic Science 2: 15-32 Doi 10.1139 / AS-2015-0027 http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/AS-2015-0027#.VvFtlXpUq50
Regehr, EV, Laidre, KL, Akçakaya, HR, Amstrup, SC, Atwood, TC, Lunn, NJ, Obbard, M., Stern, H., Thiemann, GW, & Wiig, Ø. 2016. Polar bear conservation status (Ursus maritimus) related to the expected sea ice decline. Biology letter Date 12: 20160556. http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/12/20160556
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