There are now ‘so many polar bears they pose a danger to people’, controversial report claims

A government report has claimed that there are so many polar bears in the Canadian Arctic that they pose a threat to local Inuit communities.

The report, in the wake of two fatal bear attacks, was based on submissions from Inuit community groups.

The report, prepared by the Nunavut government, has been highly controversial, as environmentalists claim the problem is not bear numbers, but bears being driven towards human settlements by climate change.

The report said, ‘Public safety concerns, combined with the effects of polar bears on other species, suggest that in many Nunavut communities, the polar bear may have exceeded the coexistence threshold.

The report comes in the wake of bear attacks on people in the Canadian Arctic, with two killed this summer in bear attacks.

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The Inuit claim that their knowledge of the region is often ignored in favour of ‘Western science and modelling’.

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Andrew Derocher of the University of Alberta said, ‘There seems to be a divergence between scientists and Inuit on the threat that climate change poses to this species.’