I am Nanook

Churchill Manitoba Canada: The autumn of 2011
I am Nanook. Long have I waited for you to take the steps necessary to save my brothers and sisters and our children. But you do very little except squabble over whose responsibility it is to reduce carbon emissions. It is too little and too late.

I  live with my tribe  on the western shore of Canada’s Hudson Bay. This area, about 1,000 miles north of the US-Canada border along the 49th parallel, is where hundreds of  my brothers and sisters  gather each fall to wait for the bay to freeze over. Once that happens, they can head out onto the ice to hunt ring seals. At this time we are in walking hibernation, not quite awake and slow and lethargic. There’s very little food for us to eat on land. As it gets colder, we wake up and head out onto the sea ice to eat.

But, this year, as last year, the ice is weeks late forming. My tribe has not eaten since July and have been arriving when they usually do — early November — but there was very little ice on Hudson Bay. We’re late beginning our hunting this year, and we were early ending the hunt this summer because the ice disappeared from beneath our feet much too soon.  Our hunt for food and sustenance is shrinking at both ends.

Many times we probe the on-shore ice to see if it is sufficiently thick and we wait and wait and the gnawing hunger in our bellies makes us weak and makes the milk in our nursing mothers become thin and without nourishment. Our cubs are fewer and weaker this year and many have died . Out on the bay, the ice is just beginning to take shape close to shore. The bay needs to be frozen over before we can venture on to it. Last year, that did not happen until the first week of December.

Many scientists say global warming in the Arctic is to blame. Some experts say the northern latitudes have warmed by 5 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, with the warming accelerating in recent decades due to increased accumulation of man-made greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. For we polar bears, less time to eat means a greater risk of not surviving the ever-lengthening time when we are on shore without food.

Because of the late ice formation some of my impatient bear brothers wander into Churchill, a town of about 800 right in the middle of the region where the polar bears congregate. Sometimes a famished bear will be drawn to town by the aroma of human food or garbage. This autumn, more bears have ambled into town than  ever  before. If we don’t have the ice we starve , and we roam around on shore waiting for the bay to freeze. And the longer it takes for the ice (to form), the hungrier we get and that brings us closer to population centers.
Churchill has a polar-bear warning system, and guards light firecrackers to scare us away if we are spotted in town. Sometimes they have to “arrest” an errant brother bear, tranquilize him and place him in a holding facility known locally as “bear jail.”

There, bears are detained for up to 30 days, with the idea that creating a mildly unpleasant association or memory of the town in the bear's mind will prevent him from wandering back into  the area. Eventually, they’re ready to be released. They’re again tranquilized, placed in a net and then airlifted by helicopter and returned to the wild. They are carried aloft and taken 40 miles north of Churchill.  A ranger straddles the drugged bear and spray paints green dye on his back. This way, if the bear returns to town again, he will be easily identified as a repeat offender.

The sad reality is that the prognosis for the world’s 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears is very poor. As the ice retreats and forms later all around the Arctic, our habitat is shrinking. It has been estimated that by 2080, Hudson Bay may not freeze anymore. That would be mean the end of the habitat for all my tribe and if any are left alive by then, it will be a very short time before they join their brothers and sisters in extinction.

Some of our tribe have wandered  south in the quest for food and the intense Manitoba summer gave them heat-induced insomnia and insanity. Over-heated polar bears are dangerous animals and I warn you all..do not approach any of us. The overheating kills us but it is a frightening and painful suffocation from the heat.

This is a parable for anyone who cares about us and other vanishing species, of the dangers of driving cars and turning on electric lamps equipped with the deadly incandescent light bulb–the root causes of global warming.  It is time  people woke up and did something about their personal carbon footprint. I recommend turning off your lights at night between 8:00 and 8:30, just a half an hour.
 According to Dr Suzuki ( a friend of the polar bears and the earth)  if every 5 minutes, all the people of the world ( six billion) held their breath for 30 seconds, the reduction of carbon emissions  would be so enormous, it would delay our extinction for time enough to reduce the carbon emissions of vehicles and other manmade inventions.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas which is emitted by cars, electric lights and human beings. It is toxic to the environment, especially to polar bears. This is because it traps heat near the surface of the planet like an overcharged electric blanket. After the polar bears become extinct, humans will be next. But that would actually be a good thing because then the number of carbon emissions would be greatly reduced and the planet would begin to heal. My only regret is that my tribe must die first. I am an old and dying bear. My time on earth is almost over. I would die with peace in my heart if I was assured that you care about us and will do your best to save us. Remember, if you save us you will be saving yourselves.... Your friend Nanook