#greenland
One Arctic town’s very busy polar bear patrol
Recent news have reported that a Russian town had to declare a state of emergency as large numbers of polar bears invaded the town in search of food. As ice melts and it becomes harder for bears to find food, human-bear conflict is becoming more and more frequent. here’s the story of such conflicts on Greenland.
Living with polar bears
Dine steps outside the incineration plant early in the morning to smoke a cigarette. Flicking on his lighter, he finds himself looking into the eyes of a polar bear standing by his ATV four meters away. The bear moves straight towards him. Dine races for the corner of the building, and fortunately, the bear chooses to move in another direction.
Mikkel, who works at the weather station, goes to launch a weather balloon at 22:00. As he walks towards the building, he hears the ice crunch behind him. He turns around and sees a polar bear three meters away. He runs inside, and the polar bear takes off down the slope at the dump and swims towards Storesten.
The hard work of the polar bear patrol
Throughout the Arctic, conflicts between polar bears and humans have risen as summer sea ice shrinks due to climate change. In some areas, bears are now forced to stay on land for longer periods than before. In their search for food, they are often attracted to nearby villages.
In Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland, the problem is particularly severe as a deluge of bears created life-threatening situations for both bears and the villagers.
In 2007, nine polar bear conflicts were registered in all of Greenland. By 2017, there were 21 conflicts between August and December in Ittoqqortoormiit alone. In almost all of the 21 cases, the local polar bear patrol was called to ensure that the bears were scared away from the community and kept under observation.
WWF provided support for the community to establish a polar bear patrol in 2015 to protect the town’s 450 residents from dangerous encounters on their way to school or work, and to reduce the number of bears killed in self-defense. During peak polar bear season in autumn, the patrol is particularly active just before school opens each morning.
“The community members tell us that the patrol gives them greater peace of mind, and we prevent a lot of polar bears from being shot in self-defense”, says Bo Øksnebjerg, Secretary-General of WWF-Denmark. “So on the one hand, we’re glad that the polar bear patrol is working so well. On the other hand, we regret that the patrol is so busy. Everything indicates that the problem of hungry polar bears in communities will continue to grow as the sea ice shrinks.”
WWF supports similar polar bear patrol projects in Alaska and Russia. These community projects aim to prevent unintended and potentially fatal encounters between polar bears and people, keeping both towns and bears safe. Deterrence tools such as noisemakers as well as better lighting near public places, bear-proof food storage containers, and warning plans for when bears enter communities are further effective means of protection.
The village of Wales, Alaska—the westernmost town in mainland North America— started a polar bear patrol in 2016. Now, they are embarking on an expedition to six other villages in the region to tell their story, listen to the concerns of other villages, and see if a polar bear conflict avoidance/deterrence program might be a good fit for them. WWF has committed to helping two additional Alaskan villages initiate polar bear patrol programs in 2019.
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Submit to our 16th annual photo contest, open now!
Photo: Mother Polar Bear Nursing Her Cub
Photographer caption: I was on an extreme expedition with my brother and daughter in East Greenland where our mission was to document the natural history with dog sleds as our only means of transport. We joined two locals, Izak and Age, from Ittoqqortoormiit on their journey to Jameson Land. Earlier this morning, the wind speed dropped, and the dogs became restless. To Izak, these are the tell-tale signs of a polar bear in the vicinity, and we soon find two sets of tracks. Polar bears amble at around 5km per hour, but it isn’t until the sun sets that a mother bear revealed her cub to us.
Photo by Danie Ferreira (Cape Town, South Africa); Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland
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Good gracious godly goodness … I missed the hell out of this cabin.
Never thought that I’d miss this place as much as I did.
But I found a new place of operations for my team, I have a stack of papers, all of them labeled “EMERGENCY”.
But I have an incredible receptionist named Jasmine and she likes to read all of these reports.
She has also taken care of the cats, killed everyone who has come here with the intent to kill me, and watered the trees in order to not cause any of them to die and thus causing the ENTIRE FREAKING FOREST TO CRY FOR A WEEK.
…
That seriously happened once.
A freaking tree fell down, died, and the entire talking forest just started crying, and they wouldn’t stop for like a week.
But thankfully we know to stop something like that.
Moving along, the state of the world appears to be like a game of Wack-O Mole.
We take care of one problem and the next thing we know, another pops up. I spent a little more than a month taking care of my team after they get abducted and already we have issues.
But … I got the team mobilized.
Giant bats in South Africa, a small creature causing illusions in India, a pillar of liquid metal in San Francisco, and a metahuman group in Greenland trying to reach into other realities.
Funny not on that last problem, there are some metahumans who actually believe that their abilities are just manifestations of them reaching into other realities and harnessing the skills or natural abilities of themselves in another world.
Example: a man can fly, so he thinks that he must be a bird in another world and that he is simply harnessing it’s potential.
That is more than likely not true for these metahumans. These ones are probably just related to some kind of powerful entity that had a breeding fetish 4,000 years ago. Or descendants of people experimented on by mad scientists in the early years of human development. Or they are the descendants of wizards who inscribed specific spells onto their genetic code.
Or any of the other millions of other reasons why someone would manifest abilities.
Me, for instance, I am a genetic descendant of Genghis Khan, who was a genetic descendant of a VERY powerful alien god that died at some point on earth.
But not before making lots of kids.
Now I am VERY diluted, it has been far too long for any of my latent abilities to have any kind of actual effect in our gravity.
Not to mention that it requires me to have ingested a large variety of chemicals that would normally kill the average human.
But this is all outside the point.
My next update will be the status reports of my new teams handling these problems.
And no, Qu’Bert did not get to keep that new giant body he made.
I put it in storage, he can have it back when he needs it, not just when he wants it.
All he even does in that body is put everything on really high shelves and make tall jokes.
I have enough of that nonsense when Mary is in Heat and does nothing but make fun of how much smaller than her I am.
And her boyfriend is NOT A WEREWOLF AND SHE IS IN DENIAL.
Yukimarimo are balls of fine frost formed at low temperatures, between -50C (-59F) and -58C (-72F).
This phenomenon was first noted in Antarctica in 1995. The balls are formed by electrostatic attraction between ice crystals. Yukimarimo are very light and very similar to cotton. They behave a bit like tumbleweed in deserts.
Picture by Heather Moe, NOAA Corps
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Absolutely stunning detail of Greenland from a relief map of the Arctic by Sean Conway, 2021
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New Releases: June 7, 2022
New Releases: June 7, 2022
Middle Grade
Alice Austen Lived Here by Alex Gino
Sam is very in touch with their own queer identity. They’re nonbinary, and their best friend, TJ, is nonbinary as well. Sam’s family is very cool with it… as long as Sam remembers that nonbinary kids are also required to clean their rooms, do their homework, and try not to antagonize their teachers too much.
The teacher-respect thing is hard when…
Chasing Ice movie reveals largest iceberg break-up ever filmed - guardian.co.uk)
