When you see more of something, doesn't THAT mean that their numbers are increasing? Not when it comes to Polar Bears!

In Nunavut, polar bears are wandering into towns, chasing children, poaching food from caches, and generally putting pressure on the people who call Northern Canada home. The increased instance of human-bear interactions, people in this region claim, is a sure sign that the polar bear population is increasing.

However, research suggests that a decreasing habitat is forcing stressed bears into territory they once left for humans.

Biologists working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska, have looked at 27 years of data from the U.S. Government Minerals Management Services. The trend that seems to emerge is that a decreasing habitat is related to an increase in polar bear sightings.

Between 1979 and 1987, 138 bears were spotted in the southern Beaufort Sea region of Alaska. This number increased dramatically, however, to 271 sightings between 1988 and 1996, and finally 468 sightings between 1997 and 2005. Moreover, the data shows that between 1979 and 1987, 12% of sightings were associated with no-ice conditions but between 1997 and 2005 90% of sightings were associated with no ice. (Read more by clicking the title.)

Polar bears are NOT the kind of animal that want to hang around with people. Unless those people are stranded on an ice floe. Only then may the bears temporarily change their policy.

If villagers are seeing an increase in polar bears it is clearly not because the bears are looking for some company. It is because they are starving, and their traditional method for finding food is failing them.

And yes that is the fault of human beings.