'Polars bears on the brink? Don't you believe it'

Doomed? The polar bear population today is around 25,000


'It's the photo that became a symbol of global warming: polar bears stranded on a melting ice-floe in mid-winter. The truth? It was taken in summer'

Then, wealthy tourists discovered the thrill of nature-watching breaks and Churchill, home to the most easily accessible polar bear population, became a fashionable - and newly prosperous - adventure holiday destination.

Although the town is still accessible only by train or light aircraft, its guesthouses are packed during late summer and autumn, when the vast ice-sheet over the bay melts, forcing around 1,000 bears to lollop around for months on the shore.

Lately, however, it is not only polar bear watchers who come flocking.

With the clamour over global warming, it has become a magnet for an army of environmentalists and climatologists who have given Churchill an air of impending doom.

The Arctic ice-cap is shrinking fast, is their message, and as it disappears, so too will the polar bears.

Today, the polar bear population may hover healthily around 25,000 (they live in Russia, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Canada).

Yet, we are repeatedly warned, if the planet continues to overheat at the present rate, within four decades our biggest carnivore will be extinct, starved to death as its natural hunting grounds disappear.

"Come up and see them while you still can," is the gist of their depressing refrain.

To some Churchill residents, who base their opinions on personal experience rather than fancy charts and computer models, this is so much nonsense put about by scaremongers for their own dubious ends.

When outsiders question whether anyone would be so cynical, they are reminded of that now-famous photograph of a polar bear which appears to be teetering precariously on an Arctic ice-floe, melting faster than ice-cream, in the depths of winter.

For a while, it became a powerful symbol of the perils of global warming - until it was revealed to have been taken three years ago and during the height of summer.

And so the battle lines between Churchill's optimists and pessimists have been drawn.
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Born and raised in Churchill, Dennis is among those who eye the new "experts" in town with deep suspicion.

According to Polar Bears International, the most prominent and widely respected campaign organisation, the West Hudson Bay bear population has fallen by 22 pc since 1987 and its prospects are bleak.

"If we lose the sea ice, we're going to lose the bears," says Dr Andrew, who serves on the group's scientific advisory council, arguing that they will not be able to adapt quickly enough to become vegetarians if and when the ice melts, leaving them with no hunting grounds.

His world-renowned colleague, Dr Ian Sterling, who has studied the bears since the mid-1970s, says that the ice now breaks up about three weeks earlier and so the bears have a shorter time in which to store up fat.

"There's a direct relationship between the date of the ice breakup and survival.

"The health, or condition, of the bears has declined over the past 30 years."

Dr Sterling says this is the reason why more "problem bears" are appearing in Churchill - and perhaps even why one came sniffing after Nigel Marven drank all that coffee.

"A starving bear isn't going to lie down and die. It's going to look for an alternative food source.

"In West Hudson Bay, that means either garbage dumps, hunting camps or, occasionally, people."

Dennis Compayre raises bushy grey eyebrows as he listens to the environmentalists predict the polar bear's demise.

"They say the numbers are down from 1,200 to around 900, but I think I know as much about polar bears as anyone, and I tell you there are as many bears here now as there were when I was a kid," he says as the tundra buggy rattles back to town across the rutted snowscape.

"Churchill is full of these scientists going on about vanishing bears and thinner bears.

"They come here preaching doom, but I question whether some of them really have the bears' best interests at heart.

"The bear industry in Churchill is big bucks, and what better way to keep people coming than to tell them they'd better hurry to see the disappearing bears."

After almost three months of working with those who know the Arctic best - among them Inuit Indians, who are appalled at the way an animal they have lived beside for centuries has become a poster species for "misinformed" Greens - Nigel Marven finds himself in broad agreement.

"I think climate change is happening, but as far as the polar bear disappearing is concerned, I have never been more convinced that this is just scaremongering.

"People are deliberately seeking out skinny bears and filming them to show they are dying out. That's not right.