Nickel Belt News Volume 60 • Issue 45
Friday, November 6, 2020
Thompson, Manitoba
Serving the Norman Region since 1961
Leaving a blank in Churchill
BY SARAH LAWRYNUIK
LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER, WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Federal polar bear research near Churchill has been put on hold for the first time since 1980 because of restrictions on travel due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Nick Lunn, an Alberta research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, travels to Northern Manitoba every year in September to conduct polar bear monitoring programs. Lunn’s work involves sedating more than 100 bears so measurements and other biological samples can be taken. The long-term data set that has been cultivated over the past 40 years is the best in the world for this species, he says. But this year that unbroken stream of information will be fractured. “Long-term data sets can handle a missed year in the time series more easily than short-term data sets,” he said in an email from Edmonton. “Techniques in analysis have advanced so much over the past 30 to 40 years that there are now ways to deal with gaps for certain types of questions. So while (it’s) disappointing to miss fall 2020, it won’t be the end of the world for the long-term nature and value of the program.” That said, it doesn’t mean the missed data is inconsequential. “Without knowing what was missed, it is
Nickel Belt News photo by Sarah Lawrynuik/Winnipeg Free Press A mother polar bear and her two cubs relax amongst the rocks near the shores of Hudson Bay in late August. not possible to assess the significance,” he said. For example, one of the first strong signals that polar bear health was linked to climate change came from a single year of data in 1992. That year the bears weighed significantly more than usual, and researchers were able to link that event with the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. The eruption launched so much particulate matter into the atmosphere that it blocked sunlight, temporarily cooling the Arctic in the spring of 1992. As a result, among other things, there was a later breakup of the sea ice in western Hudson
Bay that year — and consequently better-fed, fatter polar bears. If there had been no data collection in 1992, this specific event and link might have been missed, Lunn said. As researchers look to better understand the effects of climate change on these animals, they are expanding their understanding of what influences the bears’ health. “We know that (sea ice) breakup was later this year than last, so we would have expected bears to be in better condition this year, which hopefully translates into (more and bigger) cubs in the spring. Unfortunately,
we won’t know how much better condition they may have been in,” Lunn said. During the summer when travel restrictions to Northern Manitoba were lifted, many researchers, including Lunn, were hopeful they’d be able to get to northern communities. However, this fall the northern travel ban was reinstated. While provincial health officials allowed an exemption to the travel ban for research and tourism, many universities and government institutions have opted for more stringent restrictions internally. Thus, Lunn and his colleagues at Environment and Climate
Change Canada have been grounded. On Oct. 22, more stringent public health orders were announced for the northern region and Churchill, however there was no mention of ending the Churchill travel exemption. Andrew Derocher, professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, has worked with the polar bear population near Churchill on and off since the early 1980s. He says the impact of the missing research is significant. “Losing the monitoring conducted by Environment and Climate Change Can-
ada this year was a huge loss to polar bear science and to Arctic monitoring on a global scale. The western Hudson Bay population is the baseline study from which we have learned about how climate change affects polar bears,” he said. “Other polar bear populations have far less data and far less insight into the mechanisms of change brought by warming.” Derocher’s research is among the work being affected this year, as he is also unable to travel to northern Manitoba. Much of his research is conducted in concert with federal researchers.
Resilient wood frogs keep researcher hopping BY SARAH LAWRYNUIK
LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER, WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
One of the Churchill region’s most resilient animals is a lesser-known critter, one that has the ability to freeze like a hockey puck to weather the North’s frigid winters and has a habitat range that dips south all the way to North Carolina. It’s Canada’s most widely distributed amphibian: the wood frog. Jon Davenport, assistant professor of biology at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, makes annual trips to Churchill (at least when he isn’t blocked from field work by a global pandemic) to monitor the wood frog population and understand how it is being affected by climate change. “It’s amazing to me that
they’re even up there. Why go through all the trouble to be up there when it’s so extreme? And that’s what we’re trying to understand. And as the environment becomes even more extreme, how resilient are they?” Davenport says. Overall, the Northern Manitoba population remains stable, but there are stressors, such as drying ponds where frogs lay eggs. In tracking adult and juvenile frog movements over the past four years, unsurprisingly, the animals avoid hot, dry areas, Davenport says. What is surprising is the amount of time the frogs spend on the tundra landscape when they are more adapted to living in the woods. “We’re trying to understand how are they so stable, given that the environment is
changing? There’s a couple things we think are going on. Because maybe the ponds are drying earlier, and the frogs aren’t necessarily getting there any earlier, but they can speed up their growth to respond to that,” he says. “And even as those ponds are drying, and they come out, the adults and some of the smaller ones do spend a lot of time out in the open tundra.... We think it’s because the shrubs — which (previously) weren’t on the tundra as much — they’ve encroached onto the tundra. So the frogs can hop out of the pond, even if they have to a little earlier ... and there’s a shrub that provides them with some relief from the UV radiation. “So, that shrub encroachment, that changing of the environment, could actually
benefit the adults in some ways, but the ponds drying could negatively affect the juveniles and the larvae.” This led Davenport to venture into the frog real-estate market. He started building what he calls “frog condos” — cages the research team erects around a frog as it selects its winter hibernation spot. “They basically turn into a little frozen hockey puck. We call it super-cooling. They prevent ice crystals from forming in organs and they change over their sugars in a manner that prevents them from getting any damage to organs and basically allows them to shut down most functions and just be a little frozen Popsicle for, roughly up there in Churchill, it’s about eight-and-a-half months of the year,” he says.
“At that spot, they dig a little bit into the soil and they just freeze.” He’s itching to know: why that spot? Based on limited data so far, Davenport believes the longer time spent in hibernation expands the frog’s lifespan. Where he lives, in North Carolina, the lifespan of frogs is two to three years; in Churchill, they know the frogs can live until they’re at least four, with some evidence suggesting there are eight-year-old frogs hopping around. “It kind of makes sense, if you think about it. If they’re frozen for eight months of the year, they’re really only actively hopping around doing stuff for four months, so their equivalent of eight years is really only two-and-a-half years for a normal frog,” he
says. Monitoring of the frog population, despite its continued stability, is important, Davenport says, because of its position at the bottom of the food web. After 10 years of research, going in with an expectation he would see declines in this frog population, Davenport is now reasonably confident in the animal’s incredible ability to adapt to whatever Mother Nature throws at it. “They are being pushed, but these are the populations that are on the edge of their range and have already been pushed for however many thousands of years. So maybe for them, they are actually more resilient and we shouldn’t expect as crazy of a change for them, as we should expect if those changes occur at lower (latitudes).”