The Great White Bear (19 page)

At the meeting's close, participants were united in agreement that polar bears were an international circumpolar resource—a word that has fallen increasingly out of favor because of its perceived exploitative connotations but in this context was meant to demonstrate only that, alive as well as dead, the species was of value to, and merited protection by, the entire global community. They agreed also that cubs, and females accompanied by cubs, should be protected at all times. Beyond that, however, there was mostly despair that "scientific knowledge of the polar bear is far from being sufficient as a foundation for sound management policies."

Those assembled cautioned that each nation in the polar bear's range should "take such steps as each country considers necessary to conserve the polar bear adequately until more precise management, based on research findings, can be applied." And they urged that each of those countries should also, as a matter of priority, "conduct to the best of its ability a research program on the polar bear within its territory or adjacent international waters to obtain adequate scientific information for effective management of the species."

The Fairbanks meeting was a rock in a pond; the ripples that spread ever outward included a burst of cooperative field research, from Hudson Bay to the Beaufort Sea, on Svalbard and in East Greenland, and the establishment of a Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) that provided a forum for that research to be discussed and dissected, its conclusions challenged and debated. The group's first meeting—held behind closed doors in anticipation of possible political overreaction to discussion of international cooperation concerning, or national jurisdiction over, a polar bear population that might have the temerity at the height of the Cold War to wander from the sea ice of the Eastern Bloc to that of the West—was held in the appropriately neutral venue of Morges, Switzerland, in 1968; two years later at the same location, the group convened again.

In 1970 as in 1965, the Soviet Union put forward a proposal for a five-year moratorium on all hunting; as in 1965, the proposal did not receive universal agreement, but unlike in Fairbanks, resistance was not absolute. In an illustration of the extent to which the ground had shifted over the previous five years, the group asked governments to examine their management programs "with a view to drastically curtailing the harvesting of polar bears beginning the next hunting season and extending for the next five years."

With the hunt in some areas threatening to escalate out of control, several Arctic nations heeded that call. Prior to 1971, the number of polar bears an individual could kill in Alaska was without limit; that year the United States imposed a limit of three. The number of sport-hunting permits was capped at 210 for the western area of the state and 90 for the north. The following year, the United States adopted the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and at a stroke, sport hunting of polar bears, which two years previously had been essentially a free-for-all, was banned.

In 1970, the Norwegians limited the number of sport-hunting permits in Svalbard to 300. They had already, in 1965, banned the shooting of females and cubs and, two years after that, the hunting of any polar bears from snow machines, aircraft, or boats. In 1973, Norway subjected all polar bear hunting on Svalbard to a five-year moratorium. To date, that moratorium has not been lifted.

Momentum was now building irrevocably behind an international treaty—a suggestion first made by the Soviet Union at the 1970 meeting. The Soviet motivation, it later transpired, was not so much anxiety over polar bears' well-being—from their perspective, the hunting ban they enacted in 1956 had essentially taken care of their responsibilities on the matter—but more of a desire that the five Arctic states be seen as being the ones with authority and jurisdiction over the north polar regions. The concern, in other words, was geopolitical rather than environmental, but the effect was the same. By the time the Polar Bear Specialist Group met for a third time, in 1972, early drafts of a treaty were already being circulated, and it became increasingly clear that the only doubt about its adoption was its timing.

A number of concerns were raised and addressed. It was important, it was agreed, that a new agreement contain nothing that contravened any wider, existing international treaty. The treaty would be open to signature and ratification only by the five Arctic states; accordingly, it would need a provision under which those five nations would be expected to pressure nonsignatory nations and nationals not to hunt polar bears on the sea ice that covered international waters. There would need to be exceptions: it should not, for example, be a violation of the treaty to kill a polar bear in self-defense. Most important, the agreement would need to include particular emphasis that it did not in any way affect the rights of indigenous peoples to conduct traditional subsistence hunts.

Even with those caveats, the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears and Their Habitat, as signed in Oslo, Norway, in November 1973, clocks in at under a thousand words, almost half of which are concerned with organizational matters—who can ratify, when, and where. The most immediately relevant of them all were the first eight in Article I, which spell out with impressive clarity and brevity the agreement's singular mandate. Notwithstanding the negotiated exceptions—science, self-defense, traditional rights—the article effectively brought to an end the era of commercial polar bear hunting.

"The taking of polar bears," it stated unequivocally, "shall be prohibited."

Perhaps just as significant in the long term, however, was Article II, which instructed the signatories to "take appropriate action to protect the ecosystems of which polar bears are a part, with special attention to habitat components such as denning and feeding sites and migration patterns."

This provision, too, was enacted with great rapidity. The same year the agreement was signed, the same year that Norway placed a moratorium on polar bear hunting in Svalbard, Oslo also protected approximately 40 percent of the archipelago's landmass by royal decree. In 1976, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated the Northeast Svalbard Nature Reserve as a Biosphere Reserve, as a result of which most of the denning areas and important summer sanctuaries in the area are completely protected.

And so it continued. The Northeast Greenland National Park, 375,000 square miles in area, the largest national park in the world, was established in 1973, acknowledging traditional rights by allowing Inuit from neighboring settlements to hunt there, but protecting the objects of their attention by requiring that such excursions be confined to the distance a sled could travel in and out in the course of a day. In 1976, the Soviet Union designated Wrangel and Herald islands as State Reserves, off-limits to virtually all visitors.

The agreement, wrote Ian Stirling, represented the first time the five Arctic nations had worked together to negotiate an agreement on a circumpolar issue; and, he continued, there was "still no other polar subject upon which the circumpolar nations have come to mutual agreement."

Almost overnight, the nations in which polar bears live ceased to regard those bears solely as a menace to be shot on sight, or as targets to be aimed at for sport and profit. At a time marked by a growing global environmental ethic, they placed themselves at the forefront, both recognizing that polar bears' presence in their territories conferred upon them a responsibility and immediately choosing to exercise that responsibility.

The agreement's adoption and success are all the more remarkable for the fact that it is held together almost entirely by the will of the countries that signed it. There is no enforcement mechanism, no infrastructure to oversee compliance, nothing to compel adherence other than the collective will of the countries involved.

But even as direct pressures eased, as polar bears no longer needed to fear being pursued across ice floes by rich men looking to display their bravery in the form of a rug,
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as mothers and cubs could curl up in the warm darkness of their dens safe from the attentions of bipedal predators, other threats emerged—invisible, insidious, and with a potential impact far greater even than a parade of aerial sharpshooters could ever hope to have.

It had been a long summer. Several months of heat and nothing to eat do not a contented polar bear make. He found, as in previous years, an earthen den, sunk deep into the permafrost by generations of polar bears before him; its shade lowered the temperature enough that it was not sweltering, and its shelter protected him from the insects that buzzed outside the entrance. But now there was a familiar feeling in the air, a crispness that heralded the return of the ice and of the seals that would replenish his depleted fat reserves. The snow was now thick on the ground, deep enough that he could roll in it, rub his snout in it, toss it over himself. Its coolness was refreshing and comforting. Its familiarity reminded him of the good days that its arrival had always heralded.

He had left the den behind him, was traveling along a path similar to the one he always used, following the trails and scents with which he was familiar. He was determined but his pace was measured; the ice would not freeze up any quicker if he hurried, and he had used up energy reserves over the summer without being able to acquire any more. Far better to take his time, even to stop now and then to roll over onto his back, close his eyes, and feel the comforting blanket envelop him.

He lay there for a while, his massive paws dangling in the air, projecting an image more akin to an oversize pet than a ravenous predator. But then, with a start, he opened his eyes.

That noise.

He had heard it before, several years ago, and even now he could not be entirely sure what exactly had happened. There had been a pursuit of some kind, a fogginess, a disturbed sleep, the feeling of waking up yet not being able to move.

It had begun with that same noise. Yes, that noise was familiar, and it was growing louder.

He rolled back onto his feet and began to run—not a flat-out gallop, but a loping stride, enough to carry him into the willows and out of the open.

The object was right above him now, its clattering sound growing louder and louder. A slightest of stings in his hip briefly caught his attention, but he continued onward. Suddenly, though, his legs felt heavy, his paws started to act as if they were trying to obstruct each other. He felt an overwhelming urge to sleep. The willows, so close, seemed as if they would never get any closer. He tried to churn his legs forward some more, but the snow seemed to grip his ankles and pull him down.

Then everything went black.

"The bigger adult males don't really care about the helicopters," says Jon Talon, a helicopter pilot who carries tourists and scientists in search of the polar bears of Hudson Bay. With tourists on board, he remains at a discreet distance, far enough away that the bears don't even notice his proximity; scientists he brings down to the bears' level, low enough to fire a sedating dart into the animals' flanks.

"They all have personalities, they all react differently, even the big adult males," he continues. "I had one of them try to jump up and grab the helicopter. We have adult males that we just fly up to, they just sit there, we put the dart in them, they go to sleep, an hour later it just sits up, and when we fly over there again it's still in the same spot, just hanging out. Other bears, they run as soon as they hear the helicopter. Obviously, we take precautionary measures; if there's a bear running and it's obviously very terrified of the helicopter, we're not going to chase it down and dart it. These guys, the researchers, they have thirty-five years' experience in the field, some of them. They know these animals."

Which is not to say that only those bears that sit passively are the ones to be darted; to do so would result in a wealth of data from the biggest, boldest, bravest males and an absence of information about the rest. Even if not exactly terrified, many bears—often, Talon notes, the ones that have been tagged before and that therefore associate the descending helicopter with some form of unpleasantness—will jog away and glance anxiously over their shoulders. After all, notes polar bear researcher Geoff York, "it's the closest thing to an alien abduction that you or I could imagine."

Once a bear is spotted, its size is estimated and the appropriate amount of tranquilizer—Telazol: part Valium, part paralytic—calculated. If the bear does take flight, pilot and biologist seek to work it toward a spot that is relatively flat and as far as possible from water. Polar bears may be creatures of the ice, but it is to water that a frightened polar bear will instinctively flee, an outcome to be avoided at all costs when that bear is sedated.

The helicopter descends to about twelve feet—close enough that if a bear were so inclined, it could leap up and grab the skids—slides in behind its quarry, and angles slightly to the right, at which point the darter fires the shot and the aircraft moves off and waits for the drug to take effect. Depending on the size and condition of the bear, the drug can take as few as three or as many as twelve minutes to take effect. Once it does, the bear falls asleep, the helicopter lands, and the biologists get to work.

Time is short: although the bear will be to some extent incapacitated for as much as three hours, it will be immobile only for an hour or so, and it is during that period that the researchers must fulfill most of their tasks.

Priority one is to tag the bear, in four separate places: tattoos on the upper and lower lips and tags in the right and left ears. "Every bear gets four markings because you'd be surprised how many times we recapture a bear and can barely read its markings," York explains. "Polar bears live pretty tough lives; ear tags get chewed on by cubs, and in males they get damaged in fighting."

The bear is measured: its length, its girth, its paws, its weight. If it is the first time a bear has been captured and tagged, the researchers pull a tooth—always a vestigial premolar, a relic tooth that is no longer needed and many bear species no longer have. Back at the lab, the tooth will be cross-sectioned and dyed, unveiling a series of rings that, like those of a tree, reveal the animal's age. Blood and serum samples are examined for clues to the bear's health and diet and are kept in storage for tests that may in the future be deemed useful and have not yet been considered.