My home town is ground zero for the
fight to save the polar bear. Of all the nineteen populations of
polar bears identified world wide the bears of Churchill are being
singled out as the population suffering the most from a wonky climate
and the first that will disappear off the face of the earth.....in
fifteen to twenty years. It is a hard pill to swallow considering how
intelligent and resourceful these bears are. It will take more than
the extrapolation of selective data to convince me.
Conservation organizations that claim
to be saving the polar bears from extinction want to hold Churchill
bears up to the world as an example of mans excess ...they want
everyone to look at these starving animals and feel the guilt
...problem is they can't find any starving polar bears to show
anyone... hungry bears yes...what bear is not hungry... but is the
Churchill population of polar bears near death by lack of food...not
by a long shot.
One prominent conservation organization
came across a mother who was very sick and unable to feed her two
cubs; both near death from starvation. Over a period of three days
they filmed this family group, the video showed a young cub wracked
with convulsions and finally dying as did the mom and remaining cub.
This video was sent to the climate change meetings in Durban as an
example not of polar bears dying from the effects of climate change
but what a polar bear would look like if it was to die of starvation
due to climate change. That in itself sent a message that in my mind
was loud and clear. The immediate well being of these animals is not
the main priority. The value was not in rescuing the starving cubs
but in showing them dying and dead.
As long as we don't save them to death
this group of polar bears are handling whatever mother nature has
thrown at them well. It is what we as human beings throw at them that
will be their downfall. Let me continue in real time, what is
happening to the bears now. I do not deny that extremities in the
weather are causing additional burdens on this group of bears but I
do not buy into the hysteria over their inevitable extinction
prophesied by organizations that have agendas other than the
immediate well being of the Churchill polar bear.
In real time these polar bears are
being studied to near exhaustion, no group of bears on the planet has
been subject to the assault and battery this group has endured for
the past thirty years. The accessibility of these bears makes them
the equivalent of the lab rat, the Rhesus monkey. Being chased by
helicopter and shot with a tranquillizer dart is something these
bears face from the time they are born until they die. The processing
once they are “down” from the powerful tranquillizing drug is in
itself a degradation; they are shaved, milked, tagged tattooed and
painted not forgetting the pulling of teeth and the rectal
thermometer. This process is ongoing and has not stopped year in and
year out. The single most traumatic experience a mother with new born
cubs is faced with is what she and her cubs are put through all in
the name of science. This method of collecting information is not
without its dangers, the eight inch dart can and does miss the mark
and ends up embedded in the bears stomach causing serous injury and
deaths, heat exhaustion from trying to escape the helicopter,
drowning and broken legs are all real injuries sustained by these
bears. Polar bears suffer pain the same as we do, only difference
being they suffer pain straight up. When does the collecting of data
become less important than the trauma and pain the animal has to
endure to get it. If the Churchill bears are near extinction because
of the stresses of a rapidly changing climate do you not think adding
to that stress at this time would reduce any hope at all of them
coping and adapting to stay alive. Leave the bears alone, let them
recover on their own terms. The processes of science is not always
justifiable.
In real time: next I will fill you in
on the new polar bear rehabilitation center that has just opened up.
The collecting of wild polar bears in need of rehabilitation is not
so much driven by compassion but by the need of acquiring wild polar
bears to meet the demand of zoo's throughout the world. And where are
they getting the wild bears from..... Churchill.
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