A new multi-year study to understand the polar bears movements in the Arctic has suggested that Canada needs to have plans in place to avoid the catastrophic damage that would result from an Oil spill in the Northern Sea.

Exploration

The Beaufort Sea, north of the Northwest Territories, is ice-covered for most of the year and has about 54 million cubic metres of confirmed conventional crude oil reserves, compared to about 252 million cubic metres in Alberta.

Since 1970, 132 exploratory wells have been drilled, but no production wells have been approved, said Travis Davies, spokesman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Challenge

The challenge to predicting where polar bears will be is the massive territory each animal can cover in a season. One animal tagged in the Beaufort Sea last season is now in Russia. Their habitat is also continually changing.

But despite the enormity of the task, the research team have been instilled with a new sense of urgency as a result of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Freezing the Oil?

A review of the federal Arctic offshore drilling regulations was postponed after the BP well blew in the Gulf of Mexico last month. It seems likely that the US government will freeze all offshore drilling until a comprehensive investigation into practices has been carried out.

This has provided research projects such as this with a window of opportunity to undertake crucial investigations of their own of the possible effects of a similar spill in the Arctic.

Predict

The project hopes to understand the bears’ movements across the ice and better predict where the animals are likely to be given wind conditions, the ever-changing sea ice and location of seals, their primary prey.

They hope to collect enough information to present evidence showing the extent of the damage that could be done to polar bears and other wildlife in the event of an oil spill

Disastrous

Edmonton-based biology Prof. Andrew Derocher said an oil well blowout in Canada’s northern Beaufort Sea just before freeze-up could be disastrous to northern animals.

When spring returned, a sheen would appear through the cracks in the ice as a dripping polar bear sat by the edge, neurotically licking the oil from its fur, he said.

Harmful

Previous experiments have shown that oil can be particularly harmful to polar bears, not just because of the fragile habitat’s the tend to be found in. Officials with Indian and Northern Affairs exposed three problem bears to oil and published a report on it in 1981.

They were surprised at the intensity of the polar bears’ reaction, Derocher said. The bears immediately started grooming themselves without stopping. Two of the three died. “They ingested so much oil they basically died of kidney failure,” he said.

The future of the polar bear could now lie in the hands of conservation groups. It is with their continued efforts to raise awareness of the species’ fragile position that governments and other organisations are realising that measures need to be put in place to protect them.

If you adopt a polar bear with WWF, you can make a real difference to what the future holds for these magnificent animals.