LYUBOV ORLOVA, HONTSCH ISLAND, NUNAVUT – Joshua Illuaq was six years old when he killed his first polar bear. He was hunting with his uncle and cousin out near Pond Inlet when they spotted the animal out in the snow. “Me and my cousin both tried to shoot it, but I’m the one that got it,” he told me. “It was my bear.”
Since then, for the past fifty years, Joshua has taken a polar bear each year. He took one this winter near his home in Clyde River, hunting by himself on a skidoo. He’s killed dozens of bears with a rifle and three with a harpoon. Once, a bear surprised him while he was sleeping in an igloo. “He knocked the wall down and my rifle was out by the sled,” Joshua casually told an audience of slack-jawed students yesterday evening in the ship’s presentation room. With no other option, he took out his knife and stabbed the bear – once, just under the arm and into the heart. That was the first time he had to kill a bear with a knife. Years later, a bear caught him while he was up on a cliff, away from the rifle in his boat, and he was forced to do the same thing. “With a polar bear, as soon as his head is sideways you have to move away from the jaw side,” he told us matter-of-factly, while the students took careful notes – “if in hand-to-hand combat with polar bear, avoid jaw.” “The other thing is you have to look out for the claws,” he added.
Joshua loves polar bears. “We’re part of them,” he explained. “In my area we have polar bears that we see every year. The polar bear is like Inuk people – he learns like a human being.” When Joshua kills a bear, he divides the meat amongst his community. “We hunt for the food, not for the game,” he told me. “We hunt for our families and for the town. We always hunt to share with the people.”
Yesterday afternoon I saw a polar bear up close for the first time. Weaving through pack ice in a zodiac, we found the animal out on an ice floe, standing over a seal carcass. It was a breathtaking moment: the cream-coloured bear silhouetted against the blue-white sea ice, its muzzle red with blood, the ocean swell pulling the entire tableau up and down, up and down. For a moment, the polar bear turned his head to look up at the group of rubber boats drifting nearby, before deciding to ignore us and go back to his meal, while we ooohed and aaaahed and snapped thousands of photographs.
It was an awe-inspiring moment, thrilling in that way that I think can only come from seeing a large animal out in its natural habitat. People were moved to tears. At that moment, the idea of killing the bear seemed like an unthinkable crime.
When it comes to polar bears emotions obviously run high, for both conservationists and hunters. One of the passengers onboard the Lyubov Orlova, Dominique Henri, has been trying to sort out the various passions and interests around the polar bear. For the last three years she’s divided her time between Oxford and the Arctic, working to develop environmental regulation policies that engage both Inuit knowledge and scientific studies.
“This is not always an easy thing to do,” says Dominique. Co-management of wildlife means that northern communities finally have a say in how the animals around them are being administered, but reconciling local knowledge with . First, the science is unclear. The number of polar bears has in fact increased since the 1960s and 70s – some say by up to forty percent. In recent years, populations in some areas have gone down while others have stayed stable and even risen.
One population group that scientists say is definitely shrinking are the bears on the western coast of Hudson’s Bay, most likely because of shrinking sea ice. When local people were consulted, however, they didn’t agree with scientists’ assessment. “In a public consultation in 2007 in Hudson’s Bay, hunters said there were actually more bears,” Dominique explained. “So the quota was raised for that area.” After an international outcry, the quota was once again lowered.
The Hudson Bay controversy is a good example of the challenges that can come with co-management, and there are many others. For example, there is friction over what kind of scientific testing is ethical. Some Inuit see the mouth tattoos, tags, and collars that scientists use to study the animals as disrespectful. “If you try to think about he polar bears, you have to think about yourself first,” Joshua explained. “We should treat the bear the same way we want to be treated.”
Despite the roadblocks, however, Dominique believes that focusing on shared goals is the only way that . “There is definitely common ground between conservationists and hunters,” says Henri. “People that have grown up on the land know that bears have to be there for the long-run, as do conservationists. In understanding differences, I think the most important thing is to balance ecological needs with social concerns. Through dialogue and building strong relations – this is really the way forward.”
Photos by Lee Narraway.
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