Canada’s participation in the fourth International Polar Year (IPY) involved unprecedented cooperation nationally and internationally. The Government of Canada Program for IPY 2007–2008 recognized that to do research in the Arctic today, it is important for scientists to work closely with Canadian northern residents, who know and understand the land and who may bring with them generations of valuable traditional knowledge. Canadian IPY projects saw collaboration on an unprecedented scale with Aboriginal peoples and northern communities, governments and organizations.

Dr. Robert Letcher and Dr. Ian Stirling were co-principal investigators on a Canadian IPY project, "Polar Ecosystems in Transition: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Effects of Climate Change on Temporal Trends in Contaminant Accumulation, Foraging Ecology and Human Use of Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus)", which was led by Dr. Elizabeth Peacock of the Government of Nunavut. The collaborators gathered scientific and Inuit knowledge on changes in Polar Bear ecology, the apex Arctic marine predator. The project examined the foraging ecology of Polar Bears in selected populations and recorded Inuit knowledge of the subject in one of the populations. The study examined how the accumulation of contaminants in one population has changed with rising temperatures.

As part of this wide-ranging investigation, Robert Letcher led a study that directly linked two global environmental issues: climate change and contamination of wildlife by persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The goal of the project was to analyse various chemical contaminants in polar bears and relate the concentrations of these contaminants to variations in bear diets due to sea-ice changes in recent decades.

Environment Canada’s International Polar Year Achievements (Final Report)

Contact: Robert Letcher, (613) 998-6696, Wildlife and Landscape Science Directorate