Win­ter sea­son coming to an end; polar bear fami­lies in Bil­lefjord

Inspi­te of tha­wing peri­ods in April, the win­ter sea­son has las­ted for quite a long time. Now it is coming to an end. In late April, the wea­ther had final­ly sta­bi­li­zed with tem­pe­ra­tures below zero and many sun­ny days, brin­ging good tou­ring wea­ther bey­ond 17 May, the Nor­we­gi­an natio­nal day.

The spring has brought new inha­bi­tants to inner Isfjord: two polar bear fami­lies have been regu­lar­ly seen in Bil­lefjord and Tem­pel­fjord, inclu­ding one with 3 cubs, a gre­at rari­ty. This very plea­sant fact brought con­tro­ver­si­al dis­cus­sions regar­ding snow mobi­le traf­fic in the­se fre­quent­ly visi­ted fjords. The Sys­sel­man­nen (local aut­ho­ri­ties) asked the public seve­ral times to exe­cu­te good self con­trol and keep traf­fic to an unavo­ida­ble mini­mum. Nevert­hel­ess, small groups were obser­ved seve­ral times too clo­se or too long near the bears.

Expe­ri­ence for exam­p­le from Tem­pel­fjord in 2013 shows that polar bears, inclu­ding fami­lies with young off­spring, do not neces­s­a­ri­ly suf­fer from fre­quent traf­fic. In that spring, a mother with 2 first year cubs spent seve­ral months in Tem­pel­fjord, which was fre­quent­ly visi­ted by lar­ge num­bers of groups. Respectful beha­viour con­tri­bu­ted to the well-being of the bear fami­ly, which was gene­ral­ly not visi­bly affec­ted by traf­fic, but see­med to enjoy a good and healt­hy peri­od, with regu­lar hun­ting suc­cess.

Unfort­u­na­te­ly, both cubs from 2013 are most likely dead by now. One died in Bil­lefjord a short time after tran­qui­liza­ti­on for sci­en­ti­fic reasons. The­re is now evi­dence for the tran­qui­liza­ti­on being the cau­se of the death, but the assump­ti­on is not far away.

The second one of tho­se 2 cubs was most likely the one that was shot near Fred­heim in late March 2015 by tou­rists in their camp. The bear had inju­red one per­son in a tent and was then inju­red with seve­ral bul­lets from a revol­ver. It was later shot by the poli­ce.

The­se obser­va­tions indi­ca­te that a lar­ger num­ber of well-con­trol­led tou­rists, with respectful beha­viour, is less of a pro­blem than a smal­ler num­ber of visi­tors (inclu­ding sci­en­tists) with more unu­su­al acti­vi­ties, invol­ving a hig­her risk. An inte­res­t­ing impres­si­on, as the public recep­ti­on of tou­rists is gene­ral­ly much worse than that of sci­en­tists.

Curr­ent­ly, the grea­test public con­cern is about the polar bear fami­ly with 3 cubs. Dis­cus­sions in social net­works make it clear that the­re is public con­cern and inte­rest, at least local­ly, and the­re is litt­le tole­rance for beha­viour that might dis­turb or even end­an­ger the bears. On the other hand, the mother has alre­a­dy been mark­ed by sci­en­tists, which invol­ves tran­qui­liza­ti­on of at least the mother. It is not known in public wether the sci­en­tists used snow mobi­les or heli­c­op­ters to get within shoo­ting ran­ge, but in any way this can safe­ly be assu­med to be a trau­ma­tic expe­ri­ence for the who­le fami­ly, within a peri­od that is belie­ved to be so sen­si­ti­ve for the sur­vi­val of the young bears that the Sys­sel­man­nen asks the public to mini­mi­ze traf­fic in the same area.

Now, the snow mobi­le sea­son is over any­way, which will make life for the polar bears a bit more quiet, as indi­vi­du­al do not have the oppor­tu­ni­ty any­mo­re to get too clo­se to the bears.

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