Climate Change In Nunavut

In Nunavut there is prevailing and widespread belief among hunters that climate changes are already well under way. Here, they now see an alarming melting of sea ice earlier in the spring and a later freeze –up in the fall, all due to global warming. There is now also the appearance of flora and fauna, never before seen in the region. There is widespread general agreement among the population that there are climate changes occurring here now and these changes are becoming a source of growing local concern. Nunavut’s capital Iqaluit, population about 4300, the old Frobisher Bay, is now the largest town in Canada’s entire arctic.
However, at this writing, there is much less concern being expressed with regard to effects of climate change on

As a consequence, these animals are now forced to spend more time on shore scavenging for food, often going without while awaiting new ice to form in the fall. There is also growing concern for polar bear cubs that are thought to be incapable of swimming the increasingly greater distances in open water between shrinking ice floes. As evidence, they offer the growing number of very young polar bear carcasses that they notice being washed up on shore. Many mother bears also appear to be dangerously thin and less able to fend for themselves and their young. This situation is quite noticeable among polar bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, especially around the town of Churchill Manitoba, a location where polar bears traditionally spend the late months of fall foraging on shore awaiting the freeze-up, a freeze-up that now comes later each year. Adding to the confusion here, Churchill’s town dump also acts as a magnet, further encouraging these “resident” bears to spend longer and longer periods loitering in the area then in years

Wilfred Grenfell. He first arrived as the sponsored agent of the National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, founded in 1881, (it received a Royal designation from Queen Victoria in 1896), providing a system of care for migratory fishermen living apart from their Newfoundland outport community homes for much of the year, generally from April to October, while pursuing the Labrador Fishery and living aboard their schooners. He had arrived in 1892 and for the first year had worked only locally in Indian Harbour but son expanded. Over the years he accomplished much: By his retirement in the late 1930s he’d built up the complex, philanthropic organization (NGO) that still bears his name…. …… After just a year or two with the Mission he’d launched his own career that in time delivered medical care, along with educational and social welfare programmes, to the thousands of isolated fishermen and their families scattered along the extensive northern coastlines of the Island and the lower half of