Skip to main content

Countdown For Polar Bears

April 2023
2min read


For the past few years light planes, boats, and snowmobiles have been taking hunters to the polar ice cap in such numbers that the polar bear may be threatened with extinction. The animal is being killed as never before. Even with strict regulation, the annual kill in Alaska (about four hundred) has more than tripled in twenty years and brings to the Alaskan economy over $600,000 a year. Of the five interpolar countries— Canada, United States, Norway, Denmark (Greenland), U.S.S.R.—only Russia fully protects the polar bear. In Norway a hunter can trap bears by setting a baited gun. This often means cubs are left to die after the sow has taken the bait and been shot. With a snowmobile, a whole string of such traps can easily be maintained. The snow-mobile has also become standard equipment for Eskimos and Indians in Canada, where by far the greatest number of bears are killed—six hundred a year.

In 1968 an international “Polar Bear Group” was formed under the auspices of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (I.U.C.N.) to study the bear’s migration patterns, population, and ability to withstand arctic conditions. But unfortunately polar bear tracking and counting devices are still in their infancy. The current technique of state and federal teams in Alaska begins with finding the bear, using a ski-equipped light plane and a helicopter. Twenty minutes after the animal has been tranquilized with a dart gun fired from the helicopter, he is turned loose with a tag in each ear, an experimental collar about his neck, and big purple numbers on his flank to warn off hunters. He will also have been weighed by being dangled in a net from the helicopter, and he will have had one small tooth removed. (Like the rings of a tree, a tooth cross section will show his age.) Preliminary evidence from four hundred polar bears tagged during the past three springs indicates that the bear is not circumpolar, as was thought, and that there may be separate regional races. If true, this would mean each interpolar country could manage its own bear population.

The polar bear is large (up to a length of nine feet and a weight of one thousand pounds) and carnivorous (primarily seals), and he wanders over the ice drift some twenty to forty miles a day in search of food. In fact, the bears never go to land except to have their young, and fewer and fewer of them are doing even that. They are tough animals to study. The best hope for successful tracking of the polar bear lies in electronic transmission—a radio transmitter on the bear’s collar that will send a beep to an earth-circling Nimbus satellite. A transmitter and battery able to operate at 50 degrees below zero and to withstand frequent plunges into icy waters is being developed, and by 1971 polar bears will doubtless be tracked by satellite. But a simple counting mechanism is also badly needed. Population estimates vary widely—from ten to twenty thousand. The Alaskan teams are currently experimenting with airborne infrared scanning devices—the trick being to distinguish among the radiation thrown off by seals, bears, and arctic foxes.

James Brooks, who heads the federal government’s team in Alaska, is worried that the enormous increase in human population there, brought on by the oil strike, will mean far too many dead bears. “The American kill is already at maximum safe levels,” he says. Meanwhile, two of this country’s most prestigious hunting groups, the Boone and Crocket! Club and the National Rifle Association, have at least removed the polar bear from their trophy list.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "April 1970"

Authored by: The Editors

Here is the Nonsuch, a ketch well named, plunging through North Atlantic waves in 1668 on her way to the founding of Canada’s most famous business enterprise

Authored by: David McCullough

At one time it was the largest cotton mill in the world. Now, in the name of progress, one of New England’s most historic and unusual urban areas is being carved into parking lots

Authored by: David Lavender

A TRICENTENNIAL REPORT Having worked like a beaver to overcome three centuries of plunging thermometers, recalcitrant Indians, and fierce competitors from Quebec and the U.S.A., it remains today the continent’s most durable trading enterprise

Authored by: Frank Kintrea

The notorious financier’s properties included railroads, yachts, and newspapers, but none was more precious to him than Lyndhurst, the family castle on the Hudson. It would have distressed him to know that it now belongs to you and me

Authored by: W. A. Swanberg

Wartime America’s nerves were jumpy. One foggy night on a deserted Long Island beach a young coastguardsman heard the muffled engines of a submarine offshore, and suddenly eight shadowy figures loomed up out of the mist

When Ida Tarbell set out to probe the operations of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust, it seemed like David against Goliath all over again

Authored by: John G. Mitchell

"We have permanently safeguarded an irreplaceable primitive area," said President Truman as he dedicated Everglades National Park in 1947. Bit what is permanence, and what is "safeguarded"? Did he speak too soon?

Featured Articles

The world’s most prominent actress risked her career by standing up to one of Hollywood’s mega-studios, proving that behind the beauty was also a very savvy businesswoman. 

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.