Tag: Polar bears

AP PHOTOS: How Churchill embraces its title as polar bear capital of the world

CHURCHILL, Manitoba (AP) — When polar bears started coming to Churchill, tourists did too.

And then suddenly, polar bears began to appear everywhere — from artwork to cushion covers and even on beer cans — as residents of this remote Canadian town on Hudson Bay embraced their title as polar bear capital of the world.

Tourists are greeted with bear imagery wherever they go. At one hotel restaurant, a painting of three bears resting on the sea ice hangs high above dining tables. In a hotel room, a cushion features the animals spelling out “polar bear” as they strike various yoga-like poses. At a tour company gift shop, a giant blue sculpture of a bear welcomes customers outside the entrance.

Patrons eat lunch below a mural depicting polar bears and other wildlife, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, at the Seaport Hotel in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

But the bears are not just for tourists: one residential apartment building features a giant mural of a polar bear standing on its hind legs, peering into the town. Another mural, this one on the side of a business, features alternating images of polar bears painted in bright colors and beluga whales swimming in pairs. And readers at the town’s public library share their space with a giant sculpture of a grinning bear, displayed prominently between the shelves.

In the town’s grocery stores, too, shoppers can enjoy a “bluebeary” ale, with an illustration of a polar bear on the can.

A pillow sits on a bed, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, at the Polar Inn and Suites in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

A can of beer with a polar bear on its label sits on a shelf, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, at a market in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Climate change, caused mostly by people burning coal, oil and gas, means that one day the local population of polar bears could almost disappear.

But as long as there are bears in Churchill, residents and tourists alike will continue to appreciate and memorialize them.

A toy polar bear sits on the dashboard of a truck near an abandoned radar station, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

A polar bear sculpture greets patrons, Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024, at the Churchill Public Library in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Street signs featuring a polar bear and Indigenous tipis stand on a street corner, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Water reflects a mural featuring polar bears and beluga whales, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024, in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Tourists sit near a polar bear statue, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

A sign alerts people to the potential presence of polar bears near a beach along the Hudson Bay, Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024, in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

A dumpster sits outside of the Tundra Pub, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

A garage displays a mural of a sleeping polar bear, Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024, in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

People start a bonfire at sunset next to a sign warning them of polar bears, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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October 16, 2024
Alaska oil plan opponents lose 1st fight over Willow project

JUNEAU, Alaska — Environmentalists lost the first round of their legal battle over a major oil project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope on Monday as a judge rejected their requests to halt immediate construction work related to the Willow project, but they vowed not to give up.

The court’s decision means ConocoPhillips Alaska can forge ahead with cold-weather construction work, including mining gravel and using it for a road toward the Willow project. Environmentalists worry that noise from blasting and road construction could affect caribou.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason said she took into account support for the project by Alaska political leaders — including state lawmakers and Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation. She said she also gave “considerable weight” to the support for Willow by an Alaska Native village corporation, an Alaska Native regional corporation and the North Slope Borough, while also recognizing that project support among Alaska Natives is not unanimous.

Environmental groups and an Alaska Native organization, Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, had asked Gleason to delay construction related to Willow while their lawsuits are pending. They ultimately want Gleason to overturn the project’s approval, saying the U.S. Bureau of Land Management failed to consider an adequate range of alternatives.

Gleason said the construction work that ConocoPhillips Alaska plans for this month is “substantially narrower in scope than the Willow Project as a whole,” and the groups did not succeed in showing it would cause irreparable harm before she makes a decision on the merits of the cases.

Rebecca Boys, a company spokesperson, said ConocoPhillips Alaska appreciates the backing it has received from those “who recognize that Willow will provide meaningful opportunities for Alaska Native communities and the state of Alaska, and domestic energy for America.”

To prevent the worst of climate change’s future harms, including even more extreme weather, the head of the United Nations recently called for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and for rich countries to quit coal, oil and gas by 2040.

A ConocoPhillips Alaska executive, Stephen Bross, warned in court documents that an order blocking construction could make it “impossible” for the project to begin production by Sept. 1, 2029, and the company risks having its leases expire if the unit hasn’t produced oil by then.

One of the suits, filed by Earthjustice on behalf of numerous environmental groups, says the government analyzed an inadequate range of alternatives “based on the mistaken conclusion that it must allow ConocoPhillips to fully develop its leases.” It also says the environmental review underlying Willow’s approval didn’t assess the full climate consequences of authorizing the project because it didn’t analyze greenhouse gas emissions from other projects in the region that could follow.

The Willow project is in the northeast portion of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, where there has been debate over how much of the region should be available to oil and gas development.

The Biden administration in 2022 limited oil and gas leasing to just over half the reserve, which is home to polar bears, caribou, millions of migratory birds and other wildlife. There are multiple exploration and development projects within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Willow project, including other discoveries being pursued by ConocoPhillips Alaska, the state’s largest oil producer.

The other lawsuit, filed by Trustees for Alaska on behalf of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic and environmental groups, said federal agencies failed to take a “hard look at the direct, indirect and cumulative impacts” of the Willow project and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to address impacts to polar bears, a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

Bridget Psarianos, lead staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska, said in a statement that Gleason’s decision is “heartbreaking for all who want to protect local communities and prevent more devastating climate impacts in the Arctic and around the world. We will do everything we can to protect the region while the merits of our case get heard.”

Erik Grafe, deputy managing attorney for Earthjustice in Alaska, said while this round of legal challenges “did not produce the outcome we had hoped for, our court battle continues.”

Justice Department lawyers had argued that last month’s decision by the Biden administration approving Willow was “based in science and consistent with all legal requirements.” They also said the environmental review thoroughly analyzed emissions related to the use of oil produced by the project and called the analysis sought by Earthjustice overreaching.

State political leaders, including Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and labor unions have touted Willow as a job creator, expected to produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s significant, because major existing fields are aging and the flow of oil through the trans-Alaska pipeline is a fraction of what it was at its peak in the late 1980s.

Many Alaska Native leaders on the North Slope and groups with ties to the region have argued that the project is economically vital for their communities. Nagruk Harcharek, president of the Voice of Arctic Iñupiat, whose members include leaders from across much of the North Slope, called Gleason’s decision “another step forward for Alaska, Alaska Native self-determination, and for America’s energy security.”

But some Alaska Native leaders in the community closest to the project, Nuiqsut, have expressed concerns about impacts to their subsistence lifestyles and worried that their voices haven’t been heard.

Using the oil that Willow would produce over the 30-year life of the project would emit roughly as much greenhouse gas as the combined emissions from 1.7 million passenger cars over the same period. Climate activists say the project flies in the face of President Joe Biden’s pledges to cut carbon emissions and move to clean energy.

The administration has defended the decision on Willow and the president’s climate record. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who opposed Willow when she was a New Mexico congresswoman, last month called the project a “difficult and complex issue” involving leases issued by prior administrations. She said there was “limited decision space” and the administration had “focused on how to reduce the project’s footprint and minimize its impacts to people and to wildlife.”

Global demand for crude is expected to continue rising, according to industry analysts and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

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April 3, 2023
Major oil project approval intensifies Alaska Natives’ rift

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Biden administration’s approval this week of the biggest oil drilling project in Alaska in decades promises to widen a rift among Alaska Natives, with some saying that oil money can’t counter the damages caused by climate change and others defending the project as economically vital.

Two lawsuits filed almost immediately by environmentalists and one Alaska Native group are likely to exacerbate tensions that have built up over years of debate about ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project.

Many communities on Alaska’s North Slope celebrated the project’s approval, citing new jobs and the influx of money that will help support schools, other public services and infrastructure investments in their isolated villages. Just a few decades ago, many villages had no running water, said Doreen Leavitt, director of natural resources for the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope. Housing shortages continues to be a problem, with multiple generations often living together, she said.

“We still have a long ways to go. We don’t want to go backwards,” Leavitt said.

She said 50 years of oil production on the petroleum-rich North Slope has shown that development can coexist with wildlife and the traditional, subsistence way of life.

But some Alaska Natives blasted the decision to greenlight the project, and they are supported by environmental groups challenging the approval in federal court.

The acrimony toward the project was underscored in a letter dated earlier this month written by three leaders in the Nuiqsut community, who described their remote village as “ground zero for industrialization of the Arctic.” They addressed the letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American to lead a Cabinet department.

They cited the threat that climate change poses to caribou migrations and to their ability to travel across once-frozen areas. Money from the ConocoPhillips project won’t be enough to mitigate those threats, they said. The community is about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Willow project.

“They are payoffs for the loss of our health and culture,” the Nuiqsut leaders wrote. “No dollar can replace what we risk….It is a matter of our survival.”

But Asisaun Toovak, the mayor of Utqiaġvik, the nation’s northernmost community on the Arctic Ocean, told the AP that she jumped for joy when she heard the Biden administration approved the Willow project.

“I could say that the majority of the people, the majority of our community and the majority of the people were excited about the Willow Project,” she said.

Willow is in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a vast region on Alaska’s resource-rich North Slope that is roughly the size of Maine. It would produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, the use of which would result in at least 263 million tons (239 million metric tons) of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years, according to a federal environmental review.

The Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Sierra Club and other groups that sued Tuesday said Interior officials ignored the fact that every ton of greenhouse gas emitted by the project would contribute to sea ice melt, which endangers polar bears and Alaska villages. A second lawsuit seeking to block the project was filed Wednesday by Greenpeace and other environmental groups.

For Alaska Natives to reconcile their points of view with one another, it will take discussions. “We just continue to try to sit at the table together, break bread and meet as a region,” said Leavitt, who also is the secretary for the tribal council representing eight North Slope villages.

“I will say the majority of the voices that we heard against Willow were from the Lower 48,” she said of the contiguous U.S. states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

ConocoPhillips Alaska said the $8 billion project would create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and other revenues to be split between the federal and state governments.

The project has had widespread support among lawmakers in the state. Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, and Alaska Native lawmakers also met with Haaland to urge support.

Haaland visited the North Slope last fall, just hours after state Rep. Josiah Aullaqsruaq Patkotak, a whaling captain along with his brother on their father’s whaling crew, harvested a roughly 40-ton (36-metric tons) bowhead whale and spent hours pulling it on the ice from the Arctic Ocean at Utqiaġvik. He left the ice around 7 a.m. to be ready to meet with Haaland just two hours later.

For him, the juxtaposition of those activities on the same day underscored the dual life led by Alaska Natives on the North Slope and highlights the choices that communities make every day for their survival.

“That’s the walk our leaders have to walk,” said Patkotak, an independent who supported Willow. “We maintain our culture and our lifestyle and our subsistence aspect where we’re one with the land and animals, and the very next hour you may be having to conduct yourself, you know, in a manner that you’re playing the Western world’s game.”

He invited Haaland to view the bowhead whale that they harvested, but when Patkotak couldn’t provide a street name of where she would go, her security didn’t allow it. “Well, it’s on the ice, there are no street names,” he said.

Patkotak met again with Haaland this month in Washington, D.C., where he extended an invitation to leaders in the White House to visit Utqiagvik, “because it’s our duty to tell our story so that we’re able to strike that balance of both worlds.

“That’s a reality for us,” he said.

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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

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March 16, 2023
Major oil project approval intensifies Alaska Natives’ rift

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Biden administration’s approval this week of the biggest oil drilling project in Alaska in decades promises to widen a rift among Alaska Natives, with some saying that oil money can’t counter the damages caused by climate change and others defending the project as economically vital.

Two lawsuits filed almost immediately by environmentalists and one Alaska Native group are likely to exacerbate tensions that have built up over years of debate about ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project.

Many communities on Alaska’s North Slope celebrated the project’s approval, citing new jobs and the influx of money that will help support schools, other public services and infrastructure investments in their isolated villages. Just a few decades ago, many villages had no running water, said Doreen Leavitt, director of natural resources for the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope. Housing shortages continues to be a problem, with multiple generations often living together, she said.

“We still have a long ways to go. We don’t want to go backwards,” Leavitt said.

She said 50 years of oil production on the petroleum-rich North Slope has shown that development can coexist with wildlife and the traditional, subsistence way of life.

But some Alaska Natives blasted the decision to greenlight the project, and they are supported by environmental groups challenging the approval in federal court.

The acrimony toward the project was underscored in a letter dated earlier this month written by three leaders in the Nuiqsut community, who described their remote village as “ground zero for industrialization of the Arctic.” They addressed the letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American to lead a Cabinet department.

They cited the threat that climate change poses to caribou migrations and to their ability to travel across once-frozen areas. Money from the ConocoPhillips project won’t be enough to mitigate those threats, they said. The community is about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Willow project.

“They are payoffs for the loss of our health and culture,” the Nuiqsut leaders wrote. “No dollar can replace what we risk….It is a matter of our survival.”

But Asisaun Toovak, the mayor of Utqiaġvik, the nation’s northernmost community on the Arctic Ocean, told the AP that she jumped for joy when she heard the Biden administration approved the Willow project.

“I could say that the majority of the people, the majority of our community and the majority of the people were excited about the Willow Project,” she said.

Willow is in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a vast region on Alaska’s resource-rich North Slope that is roughly the size of Maine. It would produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, the use of which would result in at least 263 million tons (239 million metric tons) of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years, according to a federal environmental review.

The Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Sierra Club and other groups that sued Tuesday said Interior officials ignored the fact that every ton of greenhouse gas emitted by the project would contribute to sea ice melt, which endangers polar bears and Alaska villages. A second lawsuit seeking to block the project was filed Wednesday by Greenpeace and other environmental groups.

For Alaska Natives to reconcile their points of view with one another, it will take discussions. “We just continue to try to sit at the table together, break bread and meet as a region,” said Leavitt, who also is the secretary for the tribal council representing eight North Slope villages.

“I will say the majority of the voices that we heard against Willow were from the Lower 48,” she said of the contiguous U.S. states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

ConocoPhillips Alaska said the $8 billion project would create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and other revenues to be split between the federal and state governments.

The project has had widespread support among lawmakers in the state. Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, and Alaska Native lawmakers also met with Haaland to urge support.

Haaland visited the North Slope last fall, just hours after state Rep. Josiah Aullaqsruaq Patkotak, a whaling captain along with his brother on their father’s whaling crew, harvested a roughly 40-ton (36-metric tons) bowhead whale and spent hours pulling it on the ice from the Arctic Ocean at Utqiaġvik. He left the ice around 7 a.m. to be ready to meet with Haaland just two hours later.

For him, the juxtaposition of those activities on the same day underscored the dual life led by Alaska Natives on the North Slope and highlights the choices that communities make every day for their survival.

“That’s the walk our leaders have to walk,” said Patkotak, an independent who supported Willow. “We maintain our culture and our lifestyle and our subsistence aspect where we’re one with the land and animals, and the very next hour you may be having to conduct yourself, you know, in a manner that you’re playing the Western world’s game.”

He invited Haaland to view the bowhead whale that they harvested, but when Patkotak couldn’t provide a street name of where she would go, her security didn’t allow it. “Well, it’s on the ice, there are no street names,” he said.

Patkotak met again with Haaland this month in Washington, D.C., where he extended an invitation to leaders in the White House to visit Utqiagvik, “because it’s our duty to tell our story so that we’re able to strike that balance of both worlds.

“That’s a reality for us,” he said.

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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

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March 15, 2023
Biden OKs Alaska oil project, draws ire of environmentalists

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said Monday it is approving the huge Willow oil-drilling project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope, a major environmental decision by President Joe Biden that drew quick condemnation that it flies in the face of the Democratic president’s pledges to slow climate change.

The announcement came a day after the administration, in a move in the other direction toward conservation, said it would bar or limit drilling in some other areas of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean.

The Willow approval by the Bureau of Land Management would allow three drill sites, which would include up to 199 total wells. Two other drill sites proposed for the project would be denied. Project developer ConocoPhillips has said it considers the three-site option workable, and company chairman and CEO Ryan Lance called the order “the right decision for Alaska and our nation.”

Houston-based ConocoPhillips will relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of existing leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The order, one of the most significant of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s tenure, was not signed by her but rather by her deputy, Tommy Beaudreau, who grew up in Alaska and has a close relationship with state lawmakers. She was notably silent on the project, which she had opposed as a New Mexico congresswoman before becoming Interior secretary two years ago.

Climate activists were outraged that Biden approved the project, which they say put his climate legacy at risk. Allowing the drilling plan to go forward would be a major breach of Biden’s campaign promise to stop new oil drilling on federal lands, they say.

However, administration officials were concerned that ConocoPhillips’ decades-old leases limited the government’s legal ability to block the project and that courts might have ruled in the company’s favor.

Monday’s announcement is not likely to be the last word, with litigation expected from environmental groups.

The Willow project could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and tax revenues for the federal, state and local governments, the company said.

The project, located in the federally designated National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, enjoys widespread political support in the state. Alaska Native state lawmakers recently met with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to urge support for Willow.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Monday the decision was “very good news for the country.”

“Not only will this mean jobs and revenue for Alaska, it will be resources that are needed for the country and for our friends and allies,” Murkowski said. “The administration listened to Alaska voices. They listed to the delegation as we pressed the case for energy security and national security.”

Fellow Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan said conditions attached to the project should not reduce Willow’s ability to produce up to 180,000 barrels of crude a day. But he said it was “infuriating” that Biden also moved to prevent or limit oil drilling elsewhere in Alaska.

Environmental activists who have promoted a #StopWillow campaign on social media were fuming at the approval, which they called a betrayal.

“This decision greenlights 92% of proposed oil drilling (by ConocoPhllips) and hands over one the most fragile, intact ecosystems in the world to” the oil giant, said Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen. “This is not climate leadership.”

Biden understands the existential threat of climate change, “but he is approving a project that derails his own climate goals,” said Dillen, whose group vowed legal action to block the project.

Christy Goldfuss, a former Obama White House official who now is a policy chief at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said she was “deeply disappointed” at Biden’s decision to approve Willow, which would produce more than 239 million metric tons of greenhouse gases over the project’s 30-year life, roughly equal to the combined emissions from 1.7 million passenger cars.

“This decision is bad for the climate, bad for the environment and bad for the Native Alaska communities who oppose this and feel their voices were not heard,” Goldfuss said.

Anticipating that reaction among environmental groups, the White House announced on Sunday that Biden will prevent or limit oil drilling in 16 million acres in Alaska and the Arctic Ocean. The plan would bar drilling in nearly 3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea — closing it off from oil exploration — and limit drilling in more than 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve.

The withdrawal of the offshore area ensures that important habitat for whales, seals, polar bears and other wildlife “will be protected in perpetuity from extractive development,″ the White House said in a statement.

The conservation announcement did little to mollify activists.

“It’s a performative action to make the Willow project not look as bad,” said Elise Joshi, the acting executive director of Gen-Z for Change, an advocacy organization.

Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, while environmental groups rallied opposition and urged project opponents to place pressure on the administration.

City of Nuiqsut Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, whose community of about 525 people is closest to the proposed development, has been outspoken in her opposition, worried about impacts to caribou and her residents’ subsistence lifestyles. The Naqsragmiut Tribal Council, in another North Slope community, also raised concerns with the project.

But there is “majority consensus” in the North Slope region supporting the project, said Nagruk Harcharek, president of the group Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, whose members include leaders from across much of that region.

The conservation actions announced Sunday complete protections for the entire Beaufort Sea Planning Area, building upon President Barack Obama’s 2016 action on the Chukchi Sea Planning Area and the majority of the Beaufort Sea, the White House said.

Separately, the administration moved to protect more than 13 million acres within the petroleum reserve, a 23-million acre chunk of land on Alaska’s North Slope set aside a century ago for future oil production.

The Willow project is within the reserve, and ConocoPhillips has long held leases for the site. About half the reserve is off limits to oil and gas leasing under an Obama-era rule reinstated by the Biden administration last year.

Areas to be protected include the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay Special Areas, collectively known for their globally significant habitat for grizzly and polar bears, caribou and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds.

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Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska and Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana contributed to this story.

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March 13, 2023
Polar bear kills woman and boy in remote Alaska village

Polar bears at risk as sea ice melts

Polar bears could go extinct due to climate change, study warns

01:59

Wales, Alaska — A polar bear has attacked and killed two people in a remote village in western Alaska, according to state troopers.

Alaska State Troopers said they received the report of the attack at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday in Wales, on the western tip of the Seward Peninsula, KTUU reported.

“Initial reports indicate that a polar bear had entered the community and had chased multiple residents,” troopers wrote. “The bear fatally attacked an adult female and juvenile male.”

The bear was shot and killed by a local resident as it attacked the pair, troopers said.

The names of the the two people killed weren’t released. Troopers said they were working to notify family members.

Troopers and the state Department of Fish and Game are planning to travel to Wales once weather allows for it, the dispatch said.

Wales is a small, predominantly Inupiaq town of about 150 people, just over 100 miles northwest of Nome.

Fatal polar bear attacks have been rare in Alaska’s recent history. In 1990, a polar bear killed a man farther north of Wales in the village of Point Lay. Biologists later said the animal showed signs of starvation, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Alaska scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey in 2019 found changes in sea ice habitat had coincided with evidence that polar bears’ use of land was increasing and that the chances of a polar bear encounter had increased.

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January 17, 2023
74 Things That Blew Our Minds in 2022
The writers on The Atlantic’s Science, Technology, and Health desks have learned a lot this year. Our coverage of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has continued, but this year, more so than in 2020 and 2021, we’ve also had the chance to report on topics that have filled us with awe and delight. Though the past 12 months have not been free of concerns about infectious disease, climate change, and even nuclear war, we’ve embraced more fascination and curiosity in our coverage this year, and we wanted to share and reflect on some of the most compelling tidbits we’ve stumbled across. We hope you find these facts as mind-blowing as we did.
Days on the moon are hot enough to boil water, and nights are unfathomably cold, but at least one spot on the lunar surface stays a pleasant 63 degrees Fahrenheit.

Actually, snakes do have clitorises.

Scientists don’t know where the virus in the smallpox vaccine came from.

Sour or curdled milk is often perfectly safe to consume.

The bone of a mastodon named Fred preserved memories from its life 13,200 years ago.

The most common phrase on Facebook in several French-speaking countries is “Have a nice day!”

Most people with diabetes should not receive insulin as a first-, second-, or even third-line treatment.

There might not be a theoretical limit to the height from which a cat can fall and survive.

Beyond a certain temperature—as low as 95 degrees, by some estimates—fans do more harm than good.

About 10 percent of the bills introduced in Congress in the past two years have been titled with reverse-engineered acronyms, including the ZOMBIE Act.

The notes your doctor writes about you probably don’t look the same now as they did a year and a half ago.

It takes at least seven years to train the muscles and tendons in your elbow that will make you a great arm wrestler, according to the arm wrestler Jack Arias, who was in the 1987 arm-wrestling movie Over the Top with Sylvester Stallone.

American Express started making metal cards in 2004 because of an urban legend about its most exclusive card being titanium.

The first-of-its-kind electric Hummer weighs as much as an ambulance and accelerates like a Formula 1 race car.

Woodpeckers have small brains, which is why they can smash their heads against trees unharmed.

A toaster-size device inside a rover on Mars can convert Martian air, made almost entirely of carbon dioxide, into breathable oxygen.

Parrot theft is weirdly common.

Lactose-intolerant people have been throwing back dairy for thousands and thousands of years.

The provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires health insurance to cover contraception does not require coverage for vasectomies.

Pawpaws tend to stay green throughout their life cycle, so in order to tell if they’re ripe, you have to individually caress every fruit on a tree.

The metal that makes up a nickel has long been worth more than the coin itself.

The Presidential Fitness Test was developed because the federal government worried that postwar children were too soft to defeat communism when they grew up.

The iPhone is the only major Apple product that doesn’t support charging with the now-ubiquitous USB-C cable.

The oldest clam ever lived to 507.

The word sure was once pronounced more like syoor.

Some of YouTube’s earliest hits got popular thanks to “coolhunters,” a group of editors who individually picked videos for the site’s homepage.

In 1918, California conscripted children into a week-long war on squirrels.

Some baby cameras feature artificial intelligence that will recognize when your baby’s face is covered or when the baby has coughed.

Extreme heat and specific pressure conditions on WASP-96b, an exoplanet about 1,150 light-years from Earth, mean that rock can condense in the air like water does on Earth, producing clouds made of sand.

In 2021, a full quarter of single-family homes sold in America went to buyers with no intention of living in them, such as house flippers, landlords, Airbnb hosts, and other investors.

Apple has released 38 distinct models of the iPhone since 2007.

Slurpees and Icees are the exact same “frozen carbonated beverage,” sold under different trademarks.

The agricultural revolution is a myth.

Hypoallergenic dogs are also a myth.

Reindeers’ eyes change color—from blue to gold, and then back to blue again—twice a year to cope with the Arctic’s strange light schedule.

If current trends hold, half of the world’s population could be nearsighted by 2050.

A 2006 effort to automatically take down internet pornography by detecting repetitive noises ended up catching a lot of tennis videos.

Some minerals in rechargeable batteries can be recycled indefinitely.

Julius Caesar reportedly announced his conquest of Gaul via pigeon.

The Japanese makers of Hi-Chew candy were persuaded to push into the mainstream American market because of the candy’s enduring popularity among missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who had returned home after time in East Asia.

Secondhand-smoke inhalation causes more than 41,000 deaths annually in the U.S., more than some flu seasons.

The Microsoft Excel World Championship: (1) exists, (2) streams on ESPN3, and (3) is legitimately exciting.

Saturn’s trademark rings will disappear in about 300 million years.

But, on the bright side, Neptune has rings too.

China’s zero-COVID policy may be largely responsible for gas prices falling from a March peak to below $4 a gallon in August.

Polar bears in Southeast Greenland are homebodies.

The world’s best chess player, Magnus Carlsen, has, by one calculation, a 98 percent chance of losing and a 2 percent chance of drawing against the world’s best chess-playing computer program; victory is basically impossible.

Earlier this year, Moonbirds NFTs—basically colorful little pixelated owls—generated $489 million in trading volume in their first two weeks of existence.

In 1975, the average grocery store stocked 65 kinds of fruits and veggies. By 1998, that number had reached 345.

Octopuses all over the sea starve for years on end while brooding.

Government spending on climate change over the next decade could end up more than double what Democratic senators predicted for the Inflation Reduction Act.

Robusta coffee—whose taste has been likened to “rotten compost … with a hint of sulfur”—can actually be delicious.

Journals can be big business: One collector sold a diary from a 1912 Machu Picchu visitor and another by an 1868 Missouri River traveler for about $9,000 each.

There is such a thing as a reformed parasite.

In Wordle, just one correct letter in the right spot and one in the wrong spot can eliminate 96 percent of possible solutions.

A major obstacle to meeting the United States’ clean-energy goals is that we have to double the rate at which we build the giant cables that transmit power between regions.

Little kids who grew up amid intense COVID restrictions might have different microbiomes than those born several years earlier—and whether that’s good or bad is unclear.

Militaries are developing swarms of starling-size drones that will be able to fly and attack together with the use of artificial intelligence.

Psychedelics seem to quiet a network in our brain that is most active when we focus on ourselves.

The cryptocurrency exchange FTX, once valued at $32 billion before a spectacular collapse, used QuickBooks for accounting.

A product needs to be just 10 percent cocoa to be called “chocolate” by the FDA.

Gophers … might … farm?

While asleep, teeth-grinders can clench down with up to 250 pounds of force.

In 2021, 95 of the United States’ 100 most-watched telecasts were sporting events.

You can pay hundreds of dollars an hour for cow-hug therapy.

Male widow spiders will somersault into a female’s mouth to be cannibalized while they’re mating.

Ninety percent of people report having at least one memory in which they can see themselves as if watching a character in a movie.

Offices are designed to be inefficient.

Climate-minded architectural firms in Senegal are pushing the country to reclaim mud construction.

Rats can learn to play hide-and-seek, and they have fun doing it.

A cat kidney transplant costs $15,000.

The Apollo 11 moon lander will sit on the moon for millions of years because there’s no wind or water to erode it away.

Your smart thermostat mostly exists to help the utility company, not your wallet.

The cocaine-eating bear that died in 1985 and inspired the upcoming film Cocaine Bear is stuffed, mounted, and on display at a mall in Lexington, Kentucky.
The Atlantic Science Desk

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December 30, 2022
Canadian polar bears near ‘bear capital’ dying at fast rate

Polar bears in Canada’s Western Hudson Bay — on the southern edge of the Arctic — are continuing to die in high numbers, a new government survey of the land carnivore has found. Females and bear cubs are having an especially hard time.

Researchers surveyed Western Hudson Bay — home to Churchill, the town called ‘the Polar Bear Capital of the World,’ — by air in 2021 and estimated there were 618 bears, compared to the 842 in 2016, when they were last surveyed.

“The actual decline is a lot larger than I would have expected,” said Andrew Derocher, a biology professor at the University of Alberta who has studied Hudson Bay polar bears for nearly four decades. Derocher was not involved in the study.

Since the 1980s, the number of bears in the region has fallen by nearly 50%, the authors found. The ice essential to their survival is disappearing.

Polar bears rely on arctic sea ice — frozen ocean water — that shrinks in the summer with warmer temperatures and forms again in the long winter. They use it to hunt, perching near holes in the thick ice to spot seals, their favorite food, coming up for air. But as the Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world because of climate change, sea ice is cracking earlier in the year and taking longer to freeze in the fall.

That has left many polar bears that live across the Arctic with less ice on which to live, hunt and reproduce.

Polar bears are not only critical predators in the Arctic. For years, before climate change began affecting people around the globe, they were also the best-known face of climate change.

Researchers said the concentration of deaths in young bears and females in Western Hudson Bay is alarming.

“Those are the types of bears we’ve always predicted would be affected by changes in the environment,” said Stephen Atkinson, the lead author who has studied polar bears for more than 30 years.

Young bears need energy to grow and cannot survive long periods without enough food and female bears struggle because they expend so much energy nursing and rearing offspring.

“It certainly raises issues about the ongoing viability,” Derocher said. “That is the reproductive engine of the population.”

The capacity for polar bears in the Western Hudson Bay to reproduce will diminish, Atkinson said, “because you simply have fewer young bears that survive and become adults.”

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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December 23, 2022