Arviat invaded by roaming polar bears

Residents in the central Nunavut hamlet of Arviat say they can do little but watch as an unusually high number of polar bears roam through their community.

Bears started roaming last week around Arviat, a hamlet of about 2,000, prompting local RCMP, firefighters, bylaw officers and Canadian Rangers to patrol the community's perimeter every night.

That hasn't deterred the invading polar bears, however. Mayor Johnny Mamgark told CBC News the bears are not responding to common deterrents, such as flares, bear bangers, or even gunshots fired in the air.

"All my life I've been here, and I've never seen so many polar bears coming right into town," Mamgark said in an interview.

"Back in my kid days, there was nothing, hardly any. This summer, when I went out hunting, there's bears everywhere! Like, it's different; too many polar bears."

There has been no specific estimate for the number of polar bears coming through Arviat.

Late last week, Mamgark said he saw a polar bear eating caribou meat behind someone's pickup truck in the community. "That's how close they get," he said.

Resident Stephanie Czyz said local parents are concerned about their children, as they were at a local arcade event last week.

"A lot of parents were calling, telling their children not to leave the arcade until they got there, or until someone escorted them home, because there were so many bear sightings," Czyz said.

Polar bear hunting quotas in Nunavut's Kivalliq region, where Arviat is located, have been reduced to just eight bears in the 2008-2009 hunting season — a significant cut from 38 bears last year, and 56 bears the year before.

Hunters in the region have only six more bears they can take, so they are not killing any polar bears except in emergency cases in which people's safety is being threatened.

"I don't know why they're coming into town. Maybe they know that we don't have a quota for polar bears, I guess, and they know that we're not going to kill them," Mamgark said.

"They are just crossing into town now. That's not usually like that."