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More on Polar Bears
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 Dense
white fur, blowing in the frigid, unrelenting wind, a polar bear sits
with a quiet dignity fitting of its nickname, Lord of the Arctic. In a
landscape as unforgiving as it is delicate, and as beautiful as it is
stark, this massive carnivore spends summers stranded on the Arctic
tundra by the melting sea ice it calls home for most of the year. Here
in this land of contrasts, life wages a continual battle for survival,
attesting to the balance and rhythm that are nature’s trademarks. For
many, the Arctic represents true wilderness, and polar bears symbolize
the essence of the Arctic. Now waiting for the return of winter sea
ice, as they have done for thousands of years, polar bears offer us a
window into the strength, the fragility and the beauty of life on Earth.
My Experience of Polar Bears
Forthcoming from DeeAnn Pederson
The Nature of Polar Bears
By Bradford Glass
To
most of us, the Arctic is a place of mystery, evoking images of a
barren wasteland. While the long Arctic winter does indeed paint the
far north with some of the most extreme weather on Earth, this is also
a land of phenomenal beauty and variety, with life forms from the
tiniest orchid to the majestic polar bear gracing one of the planet’s
"special places." How did this land come to be the way it is? How are
the plants and animals which call the Arctic their home adapted to its
land and climate? And why does this forbidding place attract the awe of
its many visitors? It’s an extraordinary story, one which is as old as
the rock foundation upon which life holds its tenacious grasp.
Churchill,
Manitoba, on the west shore of Hudson’s Bay, is perhaps the best
location on the continent to visit the Arctic, and to visit polar bears
in their natural habitat. Churchill is also in the transition zone of
three of earth’s major biomes, or life zones: Arctic tundra, bo-real
forest (or taiga), and the Arctic marine biome, making it a rather
unique, yet accessible, destination. When glaciers last receded from
North America, they left behind in the far north a land of
un-compromis-ing beauty and variety. Hudson’s Bay, itself a prod-uct of
Pleistocene glaciation, coupled with prevailing northerly winds,
creates a gi-ant "cold warp" in North American climatic pat-terns,
bringing Arctic con-ditions well south into the conti-nent.
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Wintry Day Dream
Frosty Fun |
And
it is here that the annual ice of the bay melts last, rafting a large
population of polar bears to the shore each June, where they are
stranded for the summer, waiting out the return of sea ice in November.
Classified as marine mammals because their food supply is primarily of
the sea, bears spend the long, cold, dark Arctic winters hunting seals
from breathing holes and openings (or leads) in the ice.
Extraordinarily well-adapted as wintertime hunters, these bears are
solitary creatures, roaming or swimming hundreds of miles in search of
food or mates.
As
their lazy summer draws to a close, and after 4 or 5 months without
food, bears return to the ice, leaving pregnant females behind to their
dens. Polar bear cubs are born in January, and weigh only one pound at
birth (highest ratio of adult to newborn weight in the entire animal
kingdom). Cubs are nursed to 25 - 30 pounds by March, when they emerge
from their dens, and make a quick trip out onto the ice with mom before
it melts again in June. Mothers have now gone from June to March
without food, and having nourished one or two cubs from birth to 30
pounds -- a truly amazing adaptive feat. Cubs stay with mothers for 2
years, and are on their own during their third winter.
As
cuddly-looking and beautiful as they are dangerous, polar bears are the
only animal on the North American continent that will attack a human,
unprovoked, every time. No other creature poses this threat to humans.
The respect they engender is so very obvious, and so much a part of the
life of year-round human residents in the Arctic. Here, without
question, we have not lost all our connections with the rhythms of
nature. |
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