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November/December 2003 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Arctic Grizzlies In-depth: Arctic Grizzlies The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte Mosaic

"That’s when I was positive it was a grizzly bear," recalls Taylor, now a polar bear biologist for Nunavut. "It was weird. It’s rare, but not unheard of, for anyone to see a grizzly bear on the sea ice. As far as I know, though, no one has ever encountered one 600 kilometres north of the mainland."

That wasn’t the only surprise Taylor got that day in the spring of 1991. It all started when he spotted the bloody remains of several seal pups on the ice. Nearby was what was left of the carcass of a young polar bear. Taylor and the pilot decided to follow the killer’s tracks to see what it was up to. After tranquilizing the grizzly, he determined that it was a perfectly healthy bear.

"It was pretty clear to me that this bear had been hunting seals, then spotted a young polar bear doing the same thing," says Taylor. "It likely killed the bear to eat it. The grizzly was in really good shape. It may have even denned up there that winter. It’s possible, if unlikely, that it started off from the mainland that spring and headed north. These animals can cover a lot of distance in a relatively short time."

Some scientists initially likened the episode to one of those peculiar wonders of nature that happen from time to time, says Taylor. But there have been more and more sightings of barren-ground grizzlies over the past 15 years on the ice on the Beaufort Sea, near Banks and Victoria islands, north of the Kent Peninsula, and in the northeast on Wager and Hudson bays.

Ed Struzik is a writer based in Edmonton.

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