Legal Insurrection readers may recall that in 2019. I covered a book entitled “The Polar Bear Catastrophe that Never Happened” by Dr. Susan Crockford. The University of Victoria professor analyzes the latest data and reviews the questionable values in official estimates, concluding that polar bears are thriving.
Subsequently, she was fired from her position at the university.
However, it didn’t stop what she wrote from being true.
The polar bear, the iconic image of the climate crisis, has entirely lost its eco-activist mascot status. Climate expert Bjorn Lomborg (President of the Copenhagen Consensus and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution) recently examined the numbers in a New York Post piece and came to the same conclusion.
Protesters dressed as polar bears, while Al Gore’s hit 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth” showed us a sad, animated polar bear floating away to its death.The Washington Post warned that polar bears faced extinction, and the World Wildlife Fund’s chief scientist even claimed some polar bear populations would be unable to reproduce by 2012.And then in the 2010s, campaigners just stopped talking about polar bears.Why? Because after years of misrepresentation, it finally became impossible for them to ignore a mountain of evidence showing that the global polar bear population has increased substantially from around 12,000 in the 1960s to around 26,000 in the present day. (The main reason? People are hunting a lot less polar bears).
This is not to say people don’t go hunting for polar bears. They do. It’s just that they do it with cell phone cameras for Instagram posts while they take “polar bear safaris.”
Canada boasts around 16,000 polar bears, approximately 60% of the world’s total population. With as many bears as taxpayers, Churchill, Manitoba (pop. 900), bills itself as the “polar bear capital of the world.” It’s not unheard of to see bears Dumpster diving downtown. But the best sightings occur in the bears’ natural habitat, accessible by tundra buggy.Equipped with five-and-a-half-foot-tall tires, these 40-passenger off-road vehicles are designed for circumventing snow and ice. Most tundra buggy tours are part of multi-day itineraries including accommodations and meals (from $1,000 per person per night).Frontiers North, however, offers a one-day experience for $1,527. While Manitoba’s polar bear season is traditionally in the fall and aurora borealis season in the winter, this year Lazy Bear Expeditions is offering its first package combining both bucket list experiences.The five-night itinerary (from $4,500 per person) also includes a helicopter safari and a stop at polar bear jail.Pro tip: “Snag a window seat near the rear of the vehicle,” Kit Muir, Media Content Specialist at Travel Manitoba, said. “When it’s time to stop, you’ll be the first onto the outdoor viewing platform that’s at the back.”
Brave souls. As a Canadian recently discovered, polar bears are one of the few animals that actively hunt humans.
Two polar bears attacked and killed a worker at a remote radar station in the Canadian Arctic, the facility’s operator said.The attack happened Thursday at one of Nasittuq Corp.’s work locations on Brevoort Island, Nunavut. The company did not release the victim’s name.
Clearly, polar bears are not to be trifled with. However, they can be adorable…and it’s a good thing the beasts are thriving. After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gets done, polar bear safaris may be Canada’s only growth industry.
It’s good to see their numbers improving.
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