Arctic ducks adjust nesting to combat polar bear threat

An Environment Canada scientist says eider ducksare changing their nesting habits to combat a threat from polar bears eating more of their eggs.

Grant Gilchrist, who specializes in Arctic bird populations, says eiders and polar bears have coexisted for a long time, but when sea ice began melting two weeks earlier, things changed.

"Bears prefer to be on the ice hunting seals, but when the ice is breaking up early, they were apparently left with no otherchoice than to swim toshore," says Gilchrist.

"When they did, the first land they hit were these offshore nesting colonies of eider ducks."

The issueis "extremely widespread"in Hudson Strait, Frobisher Bay, and even as far south as theBelcherIslands in Hudson Bay.

"In some areas over 80 per cent of the colonies are being destroyed by bears and we are very concerned about this."

Eiders are significant to many Inuit communities as a source of food and their down isimportantfor clothing and even forbusinesses.

While Gilchrist says hehas no "strategic suggestions" for stopping the trend of bears preyingonthe eggs, researchers say eiders are nowdispersing their nests rather than nesting close together.

"Instead of nesting at very high densitiesin established colonies, as you might predict, they're starting to disperse and nest in lower densities which makes it more time consuming for bears to find them and to eat their eggs."

Inuit are also reporting that the birds are movingcloser to villages and hamlets, since human activityseems to offer a "bear-freezone."