Inuit hunters are bracing for another showdown this week with government wildlife scientists, this time over how many polar bears they'll be allowed to kill from one of Canada's largest populations of the iconic predator.
Scientists say the bears of Baffin Bay have been overhunted for years -- partly by Greenlanders -- and they will argue at hearings beginning Tuesday in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, that the number of valuable tags for the animals should be cut by 40 per cent, if not eliminated.
But Inuit say the bears are fine and that researchers haven't even counted them in more than a decade. They point to a recent admission that scientists drastically underestimated bowhead whales in the Arctic as a reason to be skeptical of bear estimates.
Some say if they're cut off from harvesting an animal they depend on for food and clothing, they'll ignore regulations and shoot as many bears as they need.
"We don't believe the scientists' information any more,'' said Jayko Alooloo, head of the Hunters and Trappers Organization in Pond Inlet, one of the three communities along the east shore of Baffin Island that hunts the bears. "(Hunters) will ignore new quotas.''
The territorial government wants the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board to reduce the Baffin Bay bear quota to 64 from 105 immediately and consider reducing it further or eliminating it.
The last time anyone counted -- in 1997 -- there were 2,100 polar bears along the area's mountainous coast and rugged sea ice.
But Nunavut increased hunting quotas in 2004. And the year after that, Greenland revealed its hunters had been taking more than twice as many bears as previously thought.
Computer models suggest the population is now 1,500 -- almost a 30 per cent drop.
Nonsense, says Alooloo.
The survey is too old. As well, scientists look for bears in the wrong places at the wrong times.
Hunters north of Pond Inlet routinely see several bears a day, Alooloo said.
"My brother-in-law, he's seen six bears in a day,'' he said. "They always see the bears and the tracks. That's why we don't believe the government. We know they're increasing every year.''
Alooloo points to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' recent admission that, far from being threatened, bowhead whales have in fact returned to the numbers they enjoyed before commercial harvesting -- just as Inuit elders insisted all along.
"That's the same thing with the polar bear,'' said Alooloo.
Scientific information has to be combined with traditional knowledge to develop hunting quotas, he said.
Steve Pinksen of Nunavut's environment department defends the scientific estimates, saying bears are much easier to number than whales.
"To assume that because one is wrong they're all wrong is not a fair conclusion. We do have what we feel is a fairly accurate population survey system.''
Greenland has acknowledged the problem and drastically cut its quotas, Pinksen said.
Ian Stirling, a retired Environment Canada polar bear researcher, said bear sightings are misleading because hunters naturally go to the best habitat. Population declines would start at the margins, he said.
"I don't think hunters would see changes in numbers of polar bears in the kind of travelling they do,'' he said.
Other pressures could increase human-bear contacts.
"It could be the ice is melting earlier in Baffin Bay and (the bears) are coming ashore a little bit hungrier and looking for an alternate food source.''
In fact, Stirling said a recent survey of hunters suggested about 57 per cent of them felt bears were thinner than they used to be.
Still, Inuit are feeling increasingly beset by southerners telling them how to manage what they feel are their animals, said Colin Saunders, Pond Inlet's economic development officer.
"Sometimes, scientists do need to listen to Inuit people more,'' he said.
Inuit hunters are also frustrated by forces outside their control, such as anti-sealing campaigns in Europe and the American effort to declare polar bears an endangered species.
"There are people who would rather generate an income from being out on the land rather than a nine-to-five job,'' Saunders said.
"There are people who still want to hunt. That's just in them.''
Although a polar bear tag is worth up to $25,000 to a sport hunter, Alooloo said they will be cut off if the reduced quotas are imposed. Inuit needs will come first, as bear meat provides needed variety from seal and fish and the hide makes warm clothes.
"It's Inuit food, like cows for southern people,'' Alooloo said.
"It's going to be like cutting off our hunters' arm if the NWMB decreases our quota.''
