Inuit Elder Surveys Cascade Of Changes In Canada's Far North - NYT

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PANGNIRTUNG, Nunavut - "At age 85, Inusiq Nasalik has seen some changes in his day. Born in an old whaling settlement, he lived in igloos and sod houses as a child and drove a dog team to hunt on the tundra through much of his life. Now he lives in a comfortable house with a plush sofa in his living room, a Westinghouse range and microwave oven in his modern kitchen and a big stereo to play his favorite old Eskimo songs.

Life is good for him, he says, but he is worried about the changes he sees in the wildlife that surrounds this hamlet on the shores of an icy glacier fiord just below the Arctic circle. He says the caribou are skinny, and so are the ringed seals, whose fur has become thin and patchy. The Arctic char that swim in local streams are covered with scratches, apparently from sharp rocks in waters that are becoming shallower because of climactic shifts. The beluga whales and seals do not come around Pangnirtung fiord as much anymore, perhaps because increased motorboat traffic is making too much noise.

"Maybe this is just the way it is supposed to be, but the animals are changing and I cannot tell you why," Mr. Nasalik said, between bites of raw caribou from an animal he had just caught. "Young people now prefer to eat young seals because they think the older seals are more contaminated."

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Arctic char, caribou and ringed seal are showing abnormally hard livers, according to a draft of the report that is to be released in September. Caribou have worms in their muscles and between their joints. The fat in Beluga whales is changing color. Hunters across the eastern Canadian Arctic are reporting that an increasing number of polar bears look emaciated, probably because their hunting season has been shortened by the shrinking ice cover. The Pangnirtung fiord, for instance, formerly was covered with hard ice between October and July, but in the past several years residents here say it has only been frozen between December and May. The Meteorological Service of Canada reports that the summers of 2002 and 2003 were particularly warm in the eastern Canadian Arctic, and the last three winters have also been unseasonably mild. The Yukon and Alaska have been downright scorching in recent months, with temperatures in Whitehorse reaching over 85 degrees nine days in a row in June."

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/international/americas/06canada.html

[brokensymmetry]

1. Interesting!

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