Martech Polar - Polar News

Bob Weber
TUKTOYAKTUK, N.W.T. (CP) - The Northwest Passage isn't likely ever to become a northern version of the Panama Canal, suggests the latest research on climate change and the northern ice pack.

While some types of shipping are likely to increase, fears of regular commercial traffic through Canada's Arctic waters are probably overblown, said Ross MacDonald, a scientist at Transport Canada.

"You have a lot of concerns about an issue that has yet to develop," MacDonald said at a conference on Canada's Arctic coastline in Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., earlier this month.

As climate change reduces the amount of ice in northern waters around the globe, many have suggested the Northwest Passage could finally open to commercial shipping between North American and Asian ports. But MacDonald - as well as mariners such as Duke Snider, a longtime Arctic ice pilot who now directs the Coast Guard's Pacific operations - say that ice in the Canadian Arctic is as unpredictable and dangerous as it ever was and is likely to remain so.

"We still have the same variability," said Snider, who was aboard the HMCS Montreal during recently completed naval exercises in the passage.

"There's every indication that variability will continue for a number of decades to come."

Some areas of the Arctic, notably the sea off Russia's northern coast, are seeing less ice. But in Canadian waters, ice continues to drift down from the polar ocean to be driven against the western shores of the High Arctic islands by a combination of winds and currents called the Beaufort Gyre.

While eastern stretches of the passage such as Lancaster Sound may be increasingly ice-free, the west is not.

Although even the west has occasional open years, they aren't consistent enough for commercial shippers trying to guarantee deliveries. As well, even the threat of ice is enough to make the expense of ice-capable vessels and the cost of insurance prohibitive in comparison with other international routes.

Canadian waters have the highest proportion of hard, dangerous, multi-year ice in the Arctic, said Humphrey Melling, an ice scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. He is spending the summer studying ice and meltwater flows in the High Arctic.

"As long as we have this reservoir of multi-year ice up here, we are still going to have shipping problems in the Northwest Passage," he said.

Still, the passage is likely to see increased shipping from tourism and vessels serving resource development, said MacDonald.

At least six cruise ships now regularly ply those waters. Three were in the neighbourhood last week alone.

The development of countries such as China and India has driven commodity prices to the point where remote Arctic mines can now be economically viable.

One company is currently considering a billion-dollar iron mine on northern Baffin Island, complete with port to remove the ore concentrate. And there is increasing talk of a return to offshore oil and natural gas development in the Beaufort Sea and other High Arctic waters.

New technology has made ice-capable tankers more available, at the same time as climate change has reduced the ice road season that many mines rely on for resupply.

That increased traffic will force Canada to manage both environmental risks and social disruptions. Spills and contamination can have a lasting effect in the fragile Arctic, and the Inuit may not be able to cross the sea ice to reach hunting grounds if it is continually traversed by icebreakers.

"It's a responsibility to make sure shipping is managed in a way that respects their life," MacDonald said. "People call these waters home and they don't distinguish between ice and land."

He said that's one reason why it's important to establish sovereignty over Arctic waters.

But regular shipping of international commercial cargo through the Northwest Passage is unlikely, he said.

Sometime soon, Michael Byers fears, a single ship is going to define the limits of Canadian sovereignty.

"This week or this month or this year, a single tramp steamer could take a run through the Northwest Passage to save 7,000 kilometres," the University of British Columbia political scientist says. "We might be able to stop them–but we might not."

For Byers, the real worry is that this could undermine Canada's insistence that the Northwest Passage and the waters of the Arctic archipelago are inland waters under Canadian control.

"I don't want Canadian policy to be decided on the fly, under a timeline that's been set by some ship that's been registered in Panama or Liberia with a Filipino crew," he says.

Strong words.

There were equally strong, almost defiant words from Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Iqaluit a few weeks ago when he said "Canada intends to enforce its rights under the law of the sea" treaty.

He called on all governments to sign the treaty, and accused previous Canadian governments of failing to enforce Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic and provide enough resources to monitor, patrol and protect Canada's Arctic waters.

"We always need to know who is in our waters and why they're there," he said. "We must be certain that everyone who enters our waters respects our laws and regulations, particularly those that protect the fragile Arctic environment."

Over the last week, Harper traveled to Iqaluit, Alert, Whitehorse, Yellowknife, and the Jericho diamond mine, talking about strengthening defence, encouraging tourism, and the fledgling diamond industry. But most dramatic–and potentially most expensive–was his vow to define, enforce and defend Canada's sovereignty over Arctic waters.

Issue Crosses Party Lines

The issue is complex, knotted with elements of Canadian patriotism, climate change, military activities and expenditures, and Canada-U.S. relations.

Politically, the issue enables Harper to capture an issue that cuts across party lines and resonates with some of the most deeply held views of Canada's identity as a northern nation. For the Arctic is a central part of how Canadians view the meaning of the country. It also has the political advantage of stressing an area in which Harper does not agree with the U.S.

Historian Jack Granatstein argues Harper is doing the right thing.

"The ice is melting. Most countries believe the passage is an international strait, and reject our claim," he says. "The Danes are trying to get Hans Island, and do not accept our claims in the Arctic–they claim the North Pole. The protection of the Arctic is a key national interest."

The answer, Granatstein says, requires Canada to work on several fronts: Occupation and use–and political will.

But Byers is unimpressed.

"I'm actually quite disappointed by Stephen Harper," he says. "He talks the talk just fine, but he has yet to walk the walk."

When Harper announced during the winter election campaign that there would be three new polar icebreakers built, Byers says he was elated and every Canadian Arctic expert thrilled. But since then, he says, there was no mention of icebreakers in the federal budget, in the $17 billion in defence procurement announcements, or in Harper's Arctic speech.

During the campaign, Harper promised to focus new resources on the Arctic, vowing to create a new Arctic national sensor system, build a deep water docking facility in Iqaluit, deploy new search and rescue aircraft in Yellowknife, establish a new Arctic army training centre, expand and revitalize the Canadian Rangers–and purchase three new, heavy, naval ice breakers.

Tories acknowledge privately that the promise–estimated to cost $2 billion–was originally planned to be quietly announced, but that when polls showed the Liberals were gaining ground by arguing that Harper was dangerously pro-American, they decided to showcase the commitment.

Then, shortly after the election, Harper took the opportunity to publicly snap back at U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins, who had reiterated U.S. opposition to Canada's Arctic sovereignty claim.

In May, the new government's budget set aside an additional $5.3 billion over five years to, among other things, "increase the Canadian Forces' capacity to assert Canada's Arctic sovereignty."

It was an issue that Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor had made a part of the party's defence policy while the Conservatives were in Opposition, calling it a "Canada First" policy.

"There certainly is a need for us to play in the world and represent Canada in the world, but we also had to make sure that at home we had enough resources to ensure reasonable security, and to protect our sovereignty," O'Connor says. "In the south, we've got to think about terrorism, but in the north, there are issues of sovereignty."

A few weeks ago, he flew north to tell northern communities that the government was serious, and to look at what would be involved.

A Dream Coming True

The dream of an Arctic shipping route through the fabled Northwest Passage, which drew generations of explorers, leading to the death of Sir John Franklin and his men in 1847 in a vain attempt to find a route to the Pacific Ocean, is now on the verge of being realized. But whether this will be a Canadian water route or an international waterway remains in dispute.

The issue has flared up in the past with the United States in 1970, and again in 1985, when the U.S. sent ships through the Northwest Passage without asking Canada's permission. The tension from the 1985 incident was resolved after prime minister Brian Mulroney and president Ronald Reagan talked: The U.S. agreed to ask, and Canada agreed to say yes.

"This compromise removed the irritant," Derek Burney, former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. and former chief of staff to Mulroney, recalls in his recent memoir. "Although the legal positions remain entrenched and unresolved, the dispute disappeared from public attention."

Now, it's back.

Despite the Mulroney-Reagan "compromise," the key issue for the U.S. remains the ability to send ships–military vessels, including in particular, nuclear submarines–through the passage without notification, which under international law is not permitted in a country's internal waters.

The Northwest Passage is not the only sovereignty issue. O'Connor rhymes off the others: The dispute with the Danes over Hans Island; a disagreement with the Russians over the continental shelf; and arguments with the Americans about the Canada-U.S. boundary in the Beaufort Sea, and the border at the bottom of the Alaska panhandle.

These questions of where the boundary line is drawn across Arctic waters may seem arcane and technical, but it will become increasingly important as the north becomes more accessible.

Where the lines are drawn will determine who can drill for oil, who can fish where, which pollution rules–if any–will apply in a fragile environment, and whether any ship will have to report its presence when it enters those waters.

"When the ice starts to melt up there, and it has already started, and opens up something like the Northwest Passage, we want to make sure that the laws of Canada are applied," O'Connor says.

Under international law, a country's sovereignty extends 12 nautical miles from the coast–and the Northwest Passage, he points out, is more than 24 miles wide throughout its length. (The well-known 200-mile limit is an exclusive economic zone, but does not represent full sovereignty.)

"What we worry about is what happens if somebody goes in there with a vessel that's carrying toxic waste," O'Connor says. "And it's not properly reinforced. And we have a disaster up there and we have to clean it up?"

As it is, Canada's control over the region is tentative at best. O'Connor says that for years, foreign vessels have been spotted in the Arctic without the government knowing how they got there. And when ships or planes head to the Arctic, they often refuel in Greenland.

So when he visited the Arctic, O'Connor brought reconnaissance officials from the army and the navy to scout out the best locations for new port facilities and military training facilities. The results, he says, will be part of the defence capability plan expected this fall, which will set out the department's equipment purchases for the next 10 years.

In light of this activity, is it that important to have icebreakers amid predictions that Arctic ice is melting?

Michael Byers insists that it is absolutely critical.

"We need the capacity to go anywhere at any time," he says. "You need an icebreaker to do that."

What Hillier Wants

Canada is rare among Arctic countries not to have icebreakers capable of operating year-round in the Far North. Russia, the U.S., Norway, Denmark, even South Africa all have them, and South Korea is building one.

"We really stand out," Byers says. "It's a glaring omission; the need is enormous."

The problem, he argues, is that the navy has never really wanted icebreakers. The icebreakers' functions are largely civilian in nature, providing supplies to Arctic coastal communities. They are also extremely expensive. Researchers estimate the cost could run much higher than the $2 billion the Tories calculated.

Byers acknowledges that O'Connor is deeply committed to his northern plans, but suggests that Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the defence staff, is not nearly as enthusiastic.

"If Hillier doesn't want icebreakers, there won't be icebreakers," Byers says.

However, Harper's trip to the Arctic last week may prove to be significant. In the quiet war of office politics between the minister of defence and the chief of the defence staff, the fact that O'Connor succeeded in bringing the prime minister to visit Canada's Far North was in itself a victory.

The details of the defence capability plan will show whether or not O'Connor has been successful in doing more.

Graham Fraser is a national affairs writer for the Toronto Star.

TORONTO — Melting ice is opening up the Northwest Passage and reviving a dispute between the United States and Canada over who controls the potentially lucrative shipping route.

The United States calls the passage an international strait, open to all. Canada claims control because it considers the passage an internal waterway, like the Mississippi River.

Until recently, the decades-long dispute has been mostly academic; thick sea ice blocks the passage for about 11 months of the year. But as global temperatures rise and polar ice caps melt, the ice-free season may lengthen, making the Northwest Passage a viable shipping route within decades or, the U.S. Navy says, even a few years.

Satellite photos show the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is shrinking by about 3%-4% each decade, says John Falkingham, chief of ice forecasting for the Canadian Ice Service. The melt has accelerated, he says, to a rate of about 8% per decade since 2000. But because Arctic currents push drifting ice toward the Canadian archipelago, he predicts more ice in the passage for the near term. However, Falkingham says, "at the end of the century, there could be an extended summertime shipping season."

Others expect faster change. A 2001 U.S. Navy report predicted that within 10 years, the passage would be open to non-ice-strengthened vessels for one month a year. Only icebreakers and specially made ice-hardened ships now travel the passage, mainly for military purposes and scientific research.

A reliably ice-free Northwest Passage could be a far shorter alternative to the Panama Canal. A 12,600-nautical-mile trip from Europe to Asia via the Panama Canal would be 7,900 nautical miles using the Northwest Passage. That would save hundreds of thousands of dollars for shipping companies.

"People are looking for new ways to get across the North American continent," says Garrett Brass, executive director of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission in Arlington, Va. "It would be a very attractive way to move Alaskan oil to the East Coast."

Generations of explorers dreamed of the Northwest Passage, a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Many perished searching for it. In 1906, Norwegian Roald Amundsen became the first person known to complete the passage by sea in his converted herring boat. In 1969, the U.S. tanker Manhattan became the first commercial vessel to make it through the passage, accompanied by a Canadian icebreaker.

Since then, only a few ships have followed. The United States says those multinational voyages clearly mark the Northwest Passage as an international strait.

The United States generally supports maximum freedom of the seas. U.S. officials worry about what sort of precedent the Northwest Passage could set for international straits in global hot spots, such as the Strait of Hormuz near Iran and the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia. "We don't want people closing the Straits of Gibraltar," Brass says.

For Canada, the Northwest Passage is a symbol of national sovereignty, which Canadians guard fiercely. The Canadian national anthem boasts of the "True North, strong and free."

"Some issues go beyond rationality," says Rob Huebert, associate director of the University of Calgary's Center for Military and Strategic Studies. "Any sign of an affront to northern sovereignty is absolutely guaranteed to get on the front page of all the newspapers."

That's what happened in January, when David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, casually mentioned the two nations' "agree to disagree" policy on the Northwest Passage. "We don't recognize Canada's claims to the waters," Wilkins said at a University of Western Ontario forum on Jan. 25.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded the next day. "We have significant plans for national defense and for defense of our sovereignty, including Arctic sovereignty," Harper said at his first news conference after his victory in Canada's Jan. 23 election. "It is the Canadian people we get our mandate from, not the ambassador from the United States."

Michael Byers, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia, says the agree-to-disagree policy "has become unsustainable because the ice conditions are changing so dramatically."

That's one reason Harper is determined to assert control over the passage. Harper's election campaign included promises to invest $5.3 billion Canadian dollars in northern defense, including three armed ice breakers, a deep-water port near Iqaluit by the eastern entrance to the passage and more soldiers stationed in Canada's far north.

The Northwest Passage isn't the only contentious Arctic issue. Canada and Denmark waged a war of words last summer over Hans Island, near the Arctic Circle. Both nations claim the barren island, which is about the size of a football field. Why do they care? Because Hans Island sits in the midst of what could become a busy shipping route once more polar ice melts.

Whether this Arctic showdown ever heats up depends on how soon the ice melts in the Northwest Passage. Brass says another Arctic waterway, the Northeast Passage along the northern coast of Russia, could emerge as a viable shipping route first.

Despite Falkingham's prediction that there could be an initial ice buildup, he and others agree that an ice-free Northwest Passage is not a matter of if, but when.

"A commercially viable passage is coming. It's just a matter of time," Byers says. He says the historically close U.S.-Canada trade relationship will motivate both to chart a course toward compromise on the waterway: "I think cooler heads will prevail," he says.

A mining company is making a proposal to build its own port and road into the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut.

[Tyee Editor's note: Stephen Harper stood ground against the U.S in his first news conference as prime minister-elect. At issue: Harper's vow to deploy military icebreakers to monitor and defend our northern arctic waters. The day before, U.S. ambassador to Canada David Wilkins had opposed the plan, stating, "There's no reason to create a problem that doesn't exist."

Harper's response on Friday: "The United States defends its sovereignty and the Canadian government will defend our sovereignty. It is the Canadian people we get our mandate from, not the ambassador of the United States."

At stake is control over the long sought Northwest Passage route over Canada's northern reaches, fast becoming a reality thanks to global warming. To understand the significance of such a passage, and Canada's interests there, the Tyee presents this in-depth article by UBC international law expert Michael Byers. The text below is adapted from a speech he gave to The Vancouver Institute on January 28.]

To the north of the Canadian mainland lies a vast, polar archipelago made up of 19,000 islands and countless rocks and reefs. Baffin Island is larger than the British Isles, while two of the other islands, Ellesmere and Victoria, are nearly as large. For most of the year, the straits and channels between the islands are covered by sea-ice, fusing the archipelago into a triangular mass that is 3000 kilometres-wide at its base and stretches to within 900 kilometres of the geographic North Pole.

Pierre Berton called the Northwest Passage the "Arctic Grail". From Martin Frobisher in 1576, to John Franklin in 1845, generations of explorers battled the elements searching for a navigable route through the Arctic islands to Asia. Many of them-including Franklin and his men-perished in the effort. Their greatest challenge was sea-ice. Even in summer, thick, hard, multi-year ice has long choked the straits and channels, especially in the western Arctic, rendering them impenetrable to all but the most patient of explorers or, more recently, the most powerful of icebreakers. The Norwegian explorer Roald Admundsen completed the first transit in 1906, but it took him three years.

Now, however, the ice is melting. In the last three decades, climate change has caused a 25 percent decline in the area covered by Arctic sea-ice-a decline of about 2,000,000 square kilometers. The ice is also, on average, 32 percent thinner than before. The melt is particularly advanced in the western Arctic, where the edge of the multiyear ice pack has retreated north and now lies at the northern limit of the McClure Strait. Once this edge retreats beyond the entrance to the McClure Strait, we can expect a dramatic reduction in the amount of multiyear ice moving into the Northwest Passage. This development may explain why, five years ago, a report prepared for the U.S. Navy predicted that, "within 5-10 years, the Northwest Passage will be open to non-ice-strengthened vessels for at least one month each summer."

The changing ice conditions offer a sea route between Europe and Asia that is 7,000 kilometres shorter than the route through the Panama Canal. The Northwest Passage could also accommodate supertankers and container ships that are too large for the canal. International shipping companies are eyeing the fuel, time and canal-passage fees that could be saved; some are already building ice-strengthened vessels.

The cruise ship industry is also looking north; the Kapitan Khlebnikovi, a Russian-flagged converted ice-breaker, already offers luxury voyages through the Northwest Passage-at US $10,000 per person. The melting ice will facilitate access to Alaskan and northern Canada's vast stocks of oil, gas, diamonds and precious metals.

Also, Canada's Arctic waters could eventually become a valuable fishery as reduced ice cover and warmer waters enable plankton and fish species from more temperate latitudes to move north. Indeed, Pacific salmon and Atlantic cod are already invading Arctic waters, with likely dire consequences for smaller, slower-growing indigenous species.

Canadians should be alarmed. An international shipping route along Canada's third coast could facilitate the entry of drugs, guns, illegal immigrants and perhaps even terrorists into this country, as well as providing an alternative route for illicit shipments of weapons of mass destruction or missile components by rogue states. And any shipping involves the risk of accidents, particularly in remote and icy waters. An oil spill would cause catastrophic damage to fragile Arctic ecosystems; a cruise ship in distress would require an expensive and possibly dangerous rescue mission. Any new fishery will be highly susceptible to over-exploitation, particularly because of the difficult-to-police location, rapid declines in fish stocks elsewhere and the consequent, excess fishing capacity that now exists worldwide.

Ideally, these challenges would be addressed by applying the full range of Canada's own environmental, immigration, customs and criminal laws. Sovereignty over the Northwest Passage is about much more than nationalism; it is about protecting people and the environment from serious potential harm. Yet, Canadians could soon lose any ability to regulate foreign vessels in the passage, since any foreign ship that passes through without our permission undermines the sovereignty claim.

Ownership of the islands is not at issue. In 1880, Britain assigned them to Canada and that title has not subsequently been contested-with one small exception: Hans Island. Denmark and Canada have agreed to negotiate a solution, which will likely come in the form of a joint management regime under which the sovereignty issue will cease to matter. In contrast, the history of Canada's claim over the Northwest Passage is fraught with confusion and indecision. Initially, it did not seem that title over the waterway mattered much, because of the nearly impenetrable ice.

Still, a claim to the water was at least implicit in an assertion, first made in the late 19th century, that Canada owned everything between the 60th and 141st meridians of longitude all the way to the North Pole. The most famous articulation of this "sector theory" was made by Senator Pascal Poirier in 1907, and, two years later, Captain J.E. Bernier of the C.S. Arctic placed a plaque on Melville Island that still reads:

This Memorial is erected today to commemorate the taking possession for the DOMINION OF CANADA of the whole ARCTIC ARCHIPELAGO lying to the north of America from long. 60°W to 141°W up to latitude 90°N. However, apart from the Soviet Union, which attempted a similar claim, other countries did not accept the sector theory.

In 1969, an American oil company sent an ice-strengthen oil tanker, the SS Manhattan, on a test-voyage through the Northwest Passage. The company, which was cooperating closely with the U.S. government, made a point of not seeking permission from Canada. Ottawa insisted on granting permission nevertheless, and even sent an icebreaker to assist, and subsequently argued that granting the unsolicited permission prevented the voyage from undermining Canada's claim. A more convincing defence of sovereignty came from an unexpected source. As the SS Manhattan ploughed through the ice near Resolute Bay, two Inuit hunters drove their dogsleds into its path. The vessel ground to a halt, until the hunters-having made their point-moved aside.

The following year, parliament adopted the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, imposing safety and environmental requirements on all shipping within 100 nautical miles of the Arctic coast. The claimed right to pollution prevention jurisdiction was, at that time, contrary to international law, which did not recognize coastal state rights beyond the territorial sea. However, it was subsequently made legal by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows coastal states to pass laws against maritime pollution out to 200 nautical miles when almost year-round ice creates exceptional navigational hazards.

Also in 1970, a second piece of legislation extended Canada's territorial sea from three to 12 nautical miles. This move was less controversial, since 60 other countries had made similar claims. Its immediate relevance lay in the fact that the Northwest Passage, at its narrowest points, is less than 24 nautical miles across. According to the Canadian government, the overlapping territorial seas meant that foreign vessels making the passage could be subject to the full range of its domestic laws. At the same time, Canada began arguing that the straits and channels between the islands were "historic internal waters".

The latter argument rested on the fact that most of the archipelago had been mapped by British explorers prior to the transfer of title, and very few non-consensual transits had occurred. Canada also pointed out that the Inuit-who are Canadian citizens-had travelled and lived on the ice for millennia.

There was, however, some contradiction in using both the territorial sea and historic internal waters arguments, since internal waters are by definition not territorial sea. The confusion gave strength to the U.S. position, which holds that the Northwest Passage is an "international strait". International straits are narrower in breadth than territorial seas but, because they join two expanses of high seas and are used for international navigation, they are open with relatively few restrictions to ships from any country.

More than commercial shipping was at issue. During the Cold War, the United States was concerned to maintain open access for its navy, and especially its submarines, and not just through the Northwest Passage, but through straits worldwide. Under the law of the sea, submarines may pass through an international strait without surfacing or otherwise alerting the adjacent coastal state or states, something not permitted in territorial or internal waters.

In 1985, the U.S. Coastguard icebreaker Polar Sea sailed through the Northwest Passage, again without seeking permission. Ottawa, once again, made a point of granting permission; it even asked to place several "observers" on board. Washington acceded to the request, strengthening Canada's argument that the transit was consensual and even promised to provide advance notice of any future transits by its Coastguard vessels. Yet it still made a point of publicly disputing the sovereignty claim. Following the voyage of the Polar Sea, Canada again modified its legal position. Central to the new position was the drawing of "straight baselines" linking the outer headlands of the archipelago.

As the result of a 1951 decision by the International Court of Justice in a dispute between Britain and Norway, straight baselines had become a legally accepted means for determining the extent of coastal state control along fragmented coastlines, or "coastal archipelagos". Canada invoked its prior argument of historic internal waters in support of its new baselines, arguing that its title to the waters within the baselines-which by definition are internal waters-was consolidated by historic usage. The historic usage argument was reinforced in 1993 by the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, whereby the Canadian government and Inuit affirmed that "Canada's sovereignty over the waters of the Arctic archipelago is supported by Inuit use and occupancy".

The historic consolidation argument is also supported by judgments of international courts. In 1975, in a dispute between Spain and Morocco over the Western Sahara, the International Court of Justice held that the historic presence of nomadic peoples can help to establish sovereignty. And in 1933, in a dispute between Norway and Denmark over Eastern Greenland, the predecessor to the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of International Justice, held that the degree of presence necessary to establish title over territory is lower in inhospitable regions than in more temperate climes.

However, the crux of the dispute centres on the requirement that international straits "are used for international navigation". Canada argues that a couple of non-consensual transits through the Northwest Passage do not provide a sufficient basis on which to consider those waters an international strait.

The United States, in contrast, focuses on the geographic criterion-joining two expanses of high seas-and points to a 1949 judgment of the International Court of Justice, in a dispute over the Corfu Channel, which held that the volume of traffic was of no relevance. In any event, the fact that any further usage for international navigation might contribute to the Northwest Passage becoming an international strait makes it critically important that no further non-consensual transits occur.

Canada is poorly equipped to prevent such transits. Despite having the world's longest coastline, much of it ice-covered most of the time, we do not have any all-season polar icebreakers. Four of our Coastguard icebreakers do spend each summer in the Arctic, helping ships and barges loaded with supplies to reach remote communities and cargo ships and bulk carriers to access the Port of Churchill in Hudson Bay. But these vessels are neither powerful enough nor sufficiently ice-strengthened to deal with the Arctic winter and they are redeployed to the Gulf of St. Lawrence each autumn.

In 1985, Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government announced that it would build a powerful all-season icebreaker, only to cancel the contract four years later. The situation is all the more worrisome because even non-Arctic countries such as China, Britain, South Africa and South Korea now own or are building vessels of this kind.

Canada does have a fleet of aged Aurora patrol aircraft which are now used mostly for fisheries protection on the east and west coasts; only one or two flights per year are devoted to "sovereignty assertion". The Canadian Airborne Regiment was able to deploy 500 paratroopers rapidly anywhere in the Arctic until the Chrétien government disbanded it in 1995. Today, our Arctic presence is made up largely of the Canadian Rangers, 1600 part-time volunteers who live in 58 hamlets stretching from Baffin Island to the Alaska frontier. The rangers know the land and ice and provide a useful-if slow-moving-search and rescue capacity, yet their abilities are dwarfed by the expanse in which they operate. They are also not equipped or trained for forcibly boarding ocean-going vessels.

Consequently, the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act cannot, in practice, be applied-though, to be fair, most vessels entering the Canadian Arctic do meet its standards. It is also unclear whether the right, held by coastal states to exercise pollution prevention jurisdiction in ice-covered waters, extends to international straits, and whether that right will continue after the ice disappears.

In any event, as the ice melts, more foreign vessels could attempt to use the Northwest Passage without seeking permission-as they might do in order to evade Canada's environmental laws. Canada's legal argument could soon collapse under the weight of a few precedents, leaving us with little basis on which to regulate foreign vessels, even if we acquired enforcement capabilities in the future. In short, time is running out: we either get serious about sovereignty and protecting the environment in the Northwest Passage now, or we will lose the right to do so.

Submarine transits-which are not dependent on channels free of ice-pose a particular problem. It is widely known, though infrequently acknowledged, that submarines from several countries often travel through the archipelago under the ice. In 1985, after the Polar Sea incident, the Mulroney government announced that it would acquire 12 nuclear-powered submarines for sovereignty assertion purposes. Pressure from the United States quickly resulted in the abandonment of this plan. Almost two decades later, Canada acquired four second-hand, diesel-electric submarines from the Royal Navy that are unable to travel completely submerged for more than a few hours, rendering them useless under the ice.

Arguably, it works in Canada's favour that submarines transiting the passage do not announce their presence. Some evidence of a sense of legal entitlement is generally considered essential before a country's actions can contribute to creating a right under international law. At the same time, it seems likely that Canada, as a long-standing U.S. ally, has always known about the submarine voyages and has simply kept quiet. It is even possible that the U.S. Navy, with Canada's knowledge and perhaps covert approval, has installed underwater acoustic sensors at the chokepoints into the archipelago, though no one will publicly confirm this.

In November 2004, then-Prime Minister Paul Martin declared that sovereignty "is an issue which is becoming even more important, given climate change and the opening of the Northwest Passage to transportation, and the environmental problems that may flow from that." Under the Liberal governments of Martin and Jean Chrétien, some initial steps were taken. Auroras are being upgraded with infra-red sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles are being acquired to provide long-range surveillance at lower cost. Radarsat-2, a federally funded remote sensing satellite, will soon be able to provide up-to-date, high resolution imaging on demand-giving Canada the ability to track surface vessels from space. Yet more needs to be done.

Enforcing sovereignty over the small number of navigable straits or channels in the Canadian Arctic would not require an armada. During the recent federal election campaign, Stephen Harper promised three polar icebreakers, a deep-water port near Iqualuit, underwater sensors and a new Arctic-trained airborne battalion. If Harper fulfills his promises, Canada's claim to sovereignty over the Northwest Passage will be more robust. And there is now reason to believe that he might actually keep these promises: last Thursday, just three days after the election, Harper went out of his way to reaffirm that he had "significant plans … for defence of our sovereignty, including Arctic sovereignty."

Other less dramatic measures could also be taken. Canada currently offers a registration service to all ships entering its northern waters, but it is voluntary, unlike the corresponding services on the east and west coasts. Most ships register in order to facilitate rescues, but anyone intent on challenging or evading Canadian laws will likely not do so. Making registration in the Arctic mandatory would bolster Canada's sovereignty. And it could be done even before parliament reconvenes, with a simple Order in Council. Similarly, a couple of Canadian Forces helicopters could, along with a few commandos trained in maritime interdiction, be despatched to Resolute Bay in summer to ensure compliance.

In addition, the Department of National Defence is currently deliberating whether to install high-frequency surface-wave radar at the entrances to the passage. The time for deliberation is over. The information obtained would be useful to the Canadian Forces and Coastguard and the presence of the installations would strengthen Canada's legal position.

Most importantly, it is time to persuade Washington to change its outdated position. The United States is more concerned about terrorists finding a backdoor to North America, or rogue states using the oceans to transport weapons of mass destruction, than it is concerned about Russian submarines.

In the Arctic, these new threats could just as easily be handled by a strengthened Canadian Forces and Coastguard, whose abilities would be much enhanced if Canada's domestic laws applied. It does not serve the interests of either country to have foreign vessels shielded from those laws-and subject only to the much weaker constraints of international law-by maintaining that the Northwest Passage is an international strait. And the fact of the matter is: Canada would never deny a request from the United States to allow one of its ships or submarines through the passage. Indeed, Ottawa and Washington are already planning to expand the North American Aerospace Defence Command to include maritime surveillance later this year.

Nor should Washington worry about creating an unwanted precedent for straits elsewhere. The sea-ice, and the resulting paucity of usage of the Northwest Passage for international shipping, has created a situation whereby Canada's Arctic waters can readily be distinguished from the other places where the United States claims rights of transit through "international straits".

The uniqueness of the situation may help to explain why, in November 2004, then-US ambassador Paul Cellucci admitted that U.S. national security might actually be enhanced if Washington were to recognize Ottawa's claim. "We are looking at everything through the terrorism prism," he said. "Our top priority is to stop the terrorists. So perhaps when this is brought to the table again, we may have to take another look." Invitations to negotiate do not come any clearer than that. It is time to show that Canada is willing and able to police its Arctic waters; to make the case-not just with words-that Canadian sovereignty can work for America too.

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. His work on Arctic sovereignty is supported by ArcticNet, a federally funded consortium of scientists from 23 Canadian universities.

A predicted thaw in the Arctic ice cover combined with a search for energy supplies is leading to a new "gold rush" in the high north, bringing diplomatic problems in its wake as five countries vie for access to resources.

There are disputes involving all of the five - the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark.

The US and Canada argue over rights in the North West Passage, Norway and Russia over the Barents Sea, Canada and Denmark are competing over a small island off Greenland, the Russian parliament is refusing to ratify an agreement with the US over the Bering Sea and Denmark is seeking to trump everyone by claiming the North Pole itself.

"It's the way the geography works," said Peter Croker, an Irish government petroleum expert who is also chairman of the UN's Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, a body set up to arbitrate on how far a country's coastal rights extend.

"It's the only place where a number of countries encircle an enclosed ocean. There is a lot of overlap. If you take a normal coastal state, the issues are limited to adjoining states and an outer boundary. In the Arctic, it is quite different," he told the BBC News website.

The ice thaw is predicted by a team of international researchers whose Arctic Climate Impact Assessment suggested last year that the summer ice cap could melt completely before the end of this century because of global warming. If the ice retreats, it could open up new shipping routes and new areas where natural resources could be exploited.

In any event, the hunt is on for oil and gas. The US Geological Survey estimates that a quarter of the world's undiscovered energy resources lies in Arctic areas.

Dr Rob Huebert, of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary in Canada, said that during the Cold War, security around the North Pole had to do with nuclear submarines and who was sending them.

"Now everyone is pitching for action. Climate change is reshaping the Arctic. The issues are energy, fish and shipping lanes," he said.

"It is going to get worse before it gets better. We could create an interim regime which could paper over the sovereignty disputes, but there would need to be compromise."

Under Article 76 of the Law of the Sea Convention, a state can claim a 200 nautical mile exclusive zone and beyond that up to 150 nautical miles of rights on the seabed. The baseline from which these distances are measured depends on where the continental shelf ends.

At the moment, nobody's shelf extends up to the North Pole so there is an international area around the Pole administered by the International Seabed Authority from Kingston, Jamaica.

To get round the issue of the international area around the Pole, the five countries are pushing for one of two other potential ways of sharing the region, in which all the sea would be divided between the five nations.

The median line method, supported by Canada and Denmark, would divide the Arctic sea between countries according to their length of nearest coastline. This would give Denmark the Pole itself but Canada would gain as well.

The sector method would take the North Pole as the centre and draw lines south along longitudes. This would penalise Canada but Norway and, to a lesser extent, Russia would gain.

This is the fabled northern route across the Americas, the exploration of which cost many lives. The route is open only during a brief few weeks in the summer. But it could become commercially important if it remained open for longer. Ships could transport goods to Churchill and then onto railways to take it south, for example.

Or there could be a new route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, avoiding the need for larger ships to go round Cape Horn.

However, the United States does not recognise Canada's sovereignty over the Passage. It has in the past sent its ships on unannounced voyages in order to maintain its claim that the waters are international.

It argues that waters between two open seas have to be open to all shipping. Canada claims this as a unique case. There is now an agreement that the US will notify Canada of such transits but that Canada cannot stop them.

Another Canadian-US dispute is over the Beaufort Sea, which has implications for oil and gas exploitation.

There is also a potential dispute about the so-called North East Passage along the north Russian coast. Here the US feels that Russia is claiming too much territorial water.

This is a mouse that roared. Canada and Denmark both claim this tiny lump of rock 100 metres or so wide in the Nares Strait between Canada's Ellesmere Island and the Danish territory of Greenland.

In 1973 the two countries settled their line of control in the Strait, except for Hans Island. Its possession could influence exploration and exploitation rights.

Government ministers from each side pay rival visits and landing parties from both navies raise their national flag and leave whisky and brandy as signs of their visit - and perhaps as an offering to the opposing side.

To help it police the High North, Canada is having to invest in new equipment including better ships and aircraft.

Here, the problem goes back to Stalin, who simply drew a line from the northern Russian port of Murmansk to the North Pole and declared it to be the Soviet Union's polar territory.

During the Cold War, in which Norway played a key role in Nato (it shares a frontier with Russia), not much happened.

But now commerce and capitalism are the way forward. Already vast deposits of gas have been found under the sea.

There needs to be a solid long-term arrangement, as there has been among the states encircling the riches of the North Sea.

In 1990, the United States and the then Soviet Union signed an agreement dividing this sea which separates Alaska from Siberia.

However the Russian parliament has refused to ratify it, saying that it had taken 50,000 square kilometres away from Russia. This, it is said, would deny Russia 200,000 tons of fish as well as rights to other resources.

According to Peter Croker of the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the Arctic sea grab is not a repeat of the 19th Century imperial land grab.

"People have bought into the mechanism for settling disputes and to some extent we will be used," he said.

The Commission recently ruled on a Russian submission, turning down the initial Russian demand for greater Arctic rights and telling it to reconsider and resubmit its claim.

But the Commission deals only with continental shelves and cannot rule on the other disputes.

Another complication is that states have to make claims under the Law of the Sea Convention within a time limit and the United States has not ratified the Convention. This is because of opposition from some senators who are concerned at giving away US sovereignty. Thus a major player is left on the outside.

The Arctic "gold rush" is not as chaotic as the one in California, but it is not all plain sailing either.

BARROW, Alaska — The hunter rose each day last summer from his bunk in a condemned wildlife lab, down the hall from where Inupiat villagers carve whale meat on a band saw.

He slipped on hip waders and a furry white parka, slung a rifle over his shoulders and trudged onto the Arctic tundra. Through icy fog beneath a never-setting summer sun, Eric Seykora set out to earn the nickname given him by Barrow scientists: "The Fox Killer."

Arctic foxes had been eating the eggs of rare ducks because their usual supper, tiny, mouselike lemmings, were dwindling from the drying tundra.

So the government flew this former South Dakota hunting guide 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle and paid him to spend his summer shooting foxes.

Ecological change is so scrambling Alaska's Arctic that the government has hired gunslingers to recapture some balance.

But with national debate so focused on the future of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which some in Congress last month again tried and failed to open to oil drilling, a reality is only now being noticed in the Lower 48: Arctic Alaska is already undergoing a sprawling transformation, and life is fundamentally shifting in almost every way.

The hunt for oil is moving to the ocean and across once-barren lands the size of Midwestern states, including some as ecologically valuable as ANWR.

Migrating whales, the backbone of Alaska's Inupiat culture, now arrive up to 45 days early, completely altering seasonal rhythms for Inupiat who harpoon them. Winter ice roads are collapsing months sooner than they did 35 years ago, prompting oil companies to ask the government to build highways across easily scarred tundra.

"It's hard, at times, trying to comprehend what's going on out there," said Eugene Brower, an Inupiat whaler and fire chief for the North Slope Borough, the municipal government for Arctic Alaska. "It's like we have no control over what's happening to us."

For now, the best chance to understand the future rests with a motley band of respected scientists — adventurers and misfits, cowboys and computer geeks, paid by governments, universities and noted foundations — who flock each summer to a former Navy research lab outside Barrow.

They live and work in old wooden buildings or concrete-and-metal Quonset huts, some surrounded by empty cages that once held wolves used in hypothermia experiments.

Most are oblivious to the absurdity of their conditions. To erect a tower to measure carbon dioxide coming off the Arctic Ocean, one researcher carried 40-pound car batteries across a frozen island. To measure greenhouse gas flowing to and from the earth, another scientist actually built a lake on the tundra.

Drilling in ANWR: The battle continues

Last year the United States again came close to opening a portion of the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling. The battle is not over.

After failing last spring to approve drilling as part of an energy bill, this fall Senate Republicans put the measure in a spending package, but it was defeated in the House. Last month Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, added drilling to a military-spending package, but the provision, which had been approved in the House, was dropped after a filibuster led by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

The Bush administration says exploration would use environmentally friendly technology, would be limited to 2,000 acres and could lead to the country's greatest oil find in decades.

Opponents say the 2,000-acre figure doesn't account for pipelines, gravel pits, pump stations and waste plants that would accompany the oil development. And they say even a large oil find would meet a mere fraction of the nation's needs while soiling the refuge.

The North Slope's Inupiat, who own some oil rights inside ANWR, generally support drilling there, though many oppose offshore drilling or oil exploration in other wildlife-rich areas.

The nearby Gwich'in Athabascans oppose drilling in ANWR because it is a popular hunting ground for caribous, which are as central to their culture as whaling is to the Inupiats.

In the 1990s, Congress approved ANWR drilling, but President Clinton vetoed it.

Stevens has vowed to continue pushing for drilling this year.

On a blustery morning last summer, University of Washington professor Dick Moritz dragged a child's sled piled with scientific instruments through slushy blue ponds on hard-packed ice a half-mile out to sea. Behind him, graduate student Paul Hezel toted a shotgun, in the not-unlikely event they encountered a polar bear.

Moritz and Hezel, of the UW's Polar Science Center, had been coming here for a week to test hundreds of core samples drilled from the ice. To them the Arctic's statistics were familiar.

Average annual temperatures in the Arctic have risen as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit in 50 years — even more in Alaska — according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a report by the eight nations with land inside the Arctic Circle.

The amount of ice covering the ocean in late summer has shrunk 15 to 20 percent in three decades, and 2005 was the worst year ever. That shrinking contributed to a rise of about 8 inches in sea level, helping erode the shorelines of coastal towns such as Barrow. These changes, scientists agree, can't simply be explained by weather fluctuations. In fact, ice melt is now coming faster than some computer models projected. And a thawing Arctic can actually speed up warming across the globe.

Already, ice-dependent animals, such as ivory gulls that fish through cracks in the ice, are struggling to find shelter and food. Walruses that haul out to rest on the floes sometimes find themselves too far from shore to feed on clams.

"If they don't have ice they must swim, but it takes energy to swim, and life in the Arctic is about preserving energy," said Jesse Ford, an Oregon State University ecology professor.

Inupiat, whose ancestors for thousands of years have camped on ice while hunting whales, suddenly find themselves bewildered trying to read the frozen sea.

The ice now is increasingly unpredictable, "freezing up later, melting earlier, and generally confusing us," said Richard Glenn, a geologist, ice expert, Inupiat whaling captain and board president of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, which offers logistic support for scientists.

"The ice itself changes daily, which, in a way, keeps you alive. You don't just look at how it looks today, but how it looked yesterday. You have to keep a running inventory, or you'll end up floating away."

On the slab where Moritz and Hezel were working, it was the time of year when the frozen sea, normally as stable as a wood floor, begins to crack and separate, threatening to carry researchers to the no-man's land of the Beaufort Sea.

They had cut the season so close that when colleagues radioed to check on them, the pair lied rather than admit they were a half-mile from shore.

"They're concerned about us being out here," Moritz said, gently placing a 3-foot-long tube of ice in a plastic tray. "Sometime — today, tomorrow, next week — they're going to say we can't come at all because the ice might start to move."

For now, Moritz and Hezel are trying to figure out the precise ways the physical properties of ice affect how the sun's energy passes through it. That way they can better predict how fast the ice may disappear, and help other scientists gauge how the sea will adapt.

Solid ice reflects sunlight, while standing water absorbs it. If too much ice melts, it may create what scientists call a feedback loop: Sunlight will heat more water, increasing Arctic warming, which will help melt more ice and accelerate the warming cycle.

Hezel fished another crystalline sample from the ice and flipped it over in his gloved hand to reveal speckles of colored algae buried inside.

"You have brown, but there's orange in here too, a totally different kind of life," he said.

Recent exploration of the depths of the Beaufort Sea revealed a surprising diversity despite frigid, dark conditions. In small volumes of water, thousands of tiny plants and animals teem — inchlong, shrimplike crustaceans, tiny worms and jellyfishlike creatures the size and color of oranges.

Because no sunlight penetrates for most of the year, the organisms feed only during short periods in summer, when sun and melting ice produce algae, which is eaten by crustaceans. Crustaceans and tiny sand-flealike creatures foraging beneath the ice feed Arctic cod, which feed almost everything else, from ringed seals to seabirds.

But as ice cover retreats, Arctic cod move father out to sea to chase crustaceans, making it difficult for other creatures to find food closer to land. And as warming produces more sunlight, other species — from salmon to warm-weather birds — are invading the Arctic.

"The entire food web of the upper ocean is changing, and that could have disastrous impacts on many species," said Rolf Gradinger, an oceanography professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

As they collected ice samples, Moritz and Hezel stopped every few minutes for a slow, 360-degree scan for the telltale cream-white fur of a polar bear.

Days earlier, Hezel and another colleague had stepped off their snowmobiles near a whale carcass, and turned to see a feeding bear. They fired a warning shot, dumped their instruments and fled.

Increased rain has been collapsing polar-bear dens, and shorter summer-ice seasons have made it harder for the fearless omnivores to find food.

While polar bears have adapted over thousands of years to life on the ice, they are more often now found paddling through the ocean in search of prey, or on land near shore gnawing on whales killed by Inupiat.

Last year at least four bears, likely more, appear to have drowned while swimming between melting sheets of ice — an entirely new phenomenon.

The University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that the amount of ice on the Arctic Ocean during September is declining 8 percent each year. And many computer models suggest there won't be summer ice at all by century's end — if not sooner.

Those trends led scientists this year to predict that the polar-bear population worldwide, now at about 25,000 — about 3,800 in Alaska — will drop by a third in 35 to 50 years.

To survive, polar bears may have to learn to live on solid tundra, which means competing with grizzly bears and people and exposing themselves to new sources of disease.

Mat Seidensticker gunned the engine of his four-wheel all-terrain vehicle and bombed down a muddy road into Barrow, waving to an Inupiat grandmother walking with a baby on her back.

The 26-year-old owl biologist was on his way to check a nest for snowy owls, the stark-white, toddler-sized puffs of feathers that breed just outside Barrow, which in Inupiat is called Ukpeagvik, or "place where snowy owls are hunted."

The owls help explain how small shifts in nature may be altering the entire ecosystem.

Barely a mile outside Barrow, Seidensticker pulled off the road and tromped through a puddled field of lichen, moss and grassy plants with triangular stems. There, the 6-foot-6 scientist suddenly dropped to his hands and knees, chasing a tiny lemming that shot like a bullet through the moss.

Seidensticker, with the Owl Research Institute of Montana, once sifted through 4,000 bits of waste regurgitated by snowy owls to pick apart the tiny skulls of rodents they ate. He discovered that 97 percent of their diet was lemmings, gerbil-sized critters that zip along through tiny "runways" carved in the tundra.

"When you have lots of lemmings, you also have lots of owls," he said. "We haven't had lots of either in a while."

Lemmings were so common in Barrow in the 1970s that they regularly scampered over people's feet. A researcher once caught 700 in a single day. And while lemming populations always fluctuate wildly, scientists say today's peaks don't appear as high, or as frequent, as they once were — a trend some scientists suspect is linked to global warming.

In the wintertime, lemmings travel through pockets between the snow and frozen ground, but mild snowfall and warm weather have been collapsing those corridors. In summer, lemmings like moist, damp tundra. But as the Arctic earth warms, it also dries out. Just last summer, scientists noted that 125 Arctic lakes had drained into the soil and disappeared.

Shrubs are proliferating, as changes in temperature and moisture alter plant species.

The nearest trees to Barrow are roughly 130 miles south, but warmer-weather tree species such as spruce have advanced onto the tundra six miles in a century. That adds to warming because forests absorb more sun than meadows.

And while Arctic tundra itself accounts for roughly 8 percent of the planet's land mass, it holds a quarter or more of the carbon stored in the Earth. New evidence suggests melting permafrost may release more of that carbon as greenhouse gas to the atmosphere — another way the Arctic may accelerate global warming.

Still other scientists suggest all this new vegetation means more plants will be there to convert greenhouse gases to oxygen.

Either way, the change is so basic some Natives are convinced they can taste it in the meat of caribous and other animals that graze on tundra plants.

"It's like if you've been eating at McDonald's for 20 years, and then suddenly you go to Burger King," said Leonard Lampe, a resident of the Inupiat village of Nuiqsut, near the central Beaufort Sea coast. "It tastes different, but you can't say how."

As frozen rivers break up sooner, they are interfering with some wildlife migrations. Birds common to California or Connecticut now skitter near the shores of the Beaufort Sea. Ring-neck ducks, rarely seen in the Arctic before the mid-1980s, now number in the thousands in just one area of north Alaska.

Back on the tundra, Seidensticker crouched low in the soggy field as a snowy owl circled in the distance, keeping an eye on a nest on a mound in the grass.

Snowy owls will swoop down with outstretched talons to attack anything that comes near their eggs. Some waterfowl — such as ducks called Steller's eiders, which are protected by the Endangered Species Act — tend to build their nests nearby because the owls keep predators at bay.

"Whether it's a fox, a gull, or me, owls will dive-bomb you and hit you and call loudly and do everything they can to keep you away," Seidensticker said, fingering a tear in his jacket from an earlier owl encounter.

But because fewer lemmings can also mean fewer owls to scare away foxes, the "foxes are going around eating all the eiders' eggs they want," said Nora Rojek, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist.

So this year the agency tried something new: It stole eggs from nests and incubated them in a lab. And it hired a trio of fox killers, including Seykora, to trap and shoot predators skulking around the eiders.

"I don't know if it's a cause-and-effect relationship," said Brian Person, a biologist with the municipal government of Northern Alaska. "Was it because of fox removal? I don't know ... but it sure was weird."