Setting the Stage

[Sourdough]

I keep seeing those bits on TV about the endangered Polar Bears.  The group is asking you to send in money to help protect the Bears.  To hear them the polar Bear is teetering on the brink of disaster.

Actually there is more Polar Bears today than there ever has been in recorded history.  Polar Bears are expanding their range.  They are moving inland, hunting more on land than out on the ice.  Polar Bears have been found 250 miles from the North Slope, South of the Brooks Range.  That puts them 150 miles from my house.  That is scary.

The Musk Ox have disappeared from ANWR within the last three years.  Alaska Dept Of Fish and Game do not have any reasons for the disappearance of all these Musk Ox.  They have found many dead Musk Ox, but due to scavengers they are not able to tell what killed the Musk Ox.  Yet Polar Bears are being seen through out ANWR.  The Musk Ox across the border in Canada is doing fine.  Canada has a season on Polar Bears, and are keeping the numbers down in the inland areas, around the villages.

The environmental groups are setting the stages to protest any development in Alaska North of the Brooks range.  We have all kinds of minerals, Iron, copper, zinc, lead, silver, gold, and Platnium.  As well as Oil and Natural Gas on the North Slope.  Yet here we are getting these minerals from overseas.  Continuing the transfer of wealth.

One other thing, last week during a briefing by Fish and Game, the biologist reported the Porcupine Caribou Herd for the last three years have not entered the Coastal Plain of ANWR.  They are calving in the Mountains of the Brooks Range.  We are not allowed to drill in ANWR to protect the calving grounds, yet the Caribou are not using them either.  Could the high number of Polar Bears down on the Coastal Plain have something to do with the Caribou changing their migration routes?   

[theoldarcher]

Interesting insights.  Thanks for sharing.  I have not, for several years, put much stock in information coming from the newer breed of politically correct DNR workers, regardless of where they hang their shingle.  Too much caving in to groups that could give a hoot about real management of wildlife.  It seems like common sense is becoming more and more an 'endangered species'.

Thanks again for sharing.

Arch

[Wyo. Coyote Hunter]

 ;)Sourdough, thanks for the information... I knew while a few groups of bears seem to be declining, the overall numbers of polar bears is as you say at an all time high... This is just another case like wolves, the propaganda is pushed out by eco-freaks and the newsmedia picks it up. I learned 40 years ago, to not trust the news or most envior. groups. First hand reports from those living in the area are the one reliable way to find out what is happening. In this respect, the internet is a God send....