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September 12, 2003

Chinese head to Canadian Arctic

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE

A scientific expedition to the Canadian Arctic, sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, will leave Beijing next week.

The expedition plans to investigate climatic changes, according to Guo Wang, a researcher from the CAS and the expedition's leader. Wang said the team will fly to Vancouver and then head north.

Team members will collect spores from the air and soil while in the High Arctic, to record environmental changes in the region over the past 40,000 years.

"Spores contained in strata of varying ages are very good indicators of environmental variations over time," Wang told the China Daily newspaper.

September 12, 2003

Drivers: watch out for polar bears

New signs for the Svalbard islands off the extreme northern coast of Norway warn drivers to watch out for polar bears. The signs are posted along 40 km of roadway.

The previous signs showed a polar bear in black against a white background, however, the new signs show a white bear against a black background.

Officials hope the new signs will remain in place because the old signs were popular souvenir items for tourists.

September 12, 2003

U.N. says Norway's Saami are right to fight bill

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has harshly criticized a Norwegian bill called "Finnmarksloven."

The committee said the Saami are being offered a bad deal by the proposed new law, which would limit Saamis' rights to their traditional land, along with their access to natural resources.

"I'm very satisfied that the U.N. committee so clearly supports the Saami position," Ole Henrik Magga, the former president of the Saami parliament who now heads the U.N. forum on indigenous peoples, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.

Magga said he felt like he'd been "spit in the face" when the Norwegian government first presented its proposal last spring. He said he fears the new law would keep Saami from controlling their traditional lands and waters, as international law demands.

"Our work for Saami rights will be set back 25 years," Magga said.

Prof. Kirsti Stroem Bull, one of Norway's experts on Saami rights, blasted the government's proposal at a recent seminar in Kautokeino, saying it was hastily written.

The Saami parliament has already rejected the bill. Next month, a group of Norwegian politicians will travel to the Saami territory to discuss the issue.

September 12, 2003

NASA loves Svalbard

Norway's Arctic archipelago, the Svalbard Islands, has won rave reviews from Mars researchers linked to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

A team spent the summer working on Svalbard, and dubbed it "perfect."

Allan Treiman of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that Svalbard's mountain formations, water and even bacteria in warm springs are ideal for studying Mars.

September 12, 2003

Alaskans harvest beached beluga

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE

Several dead beluga whales washed ashore recently in Alaska after dozens were temporarily stranded on mud flats during low tide. The dead whales were among 46 beluga that were grounded at a bay about 60 km southeast of Anchorage.

The survivors swam out with the high tide, but hunters salvaged blubber and meat from the beached whales.

The whales were beached at least a half mile on the flats. They were scattered over a mile area and unreachable because of water channels in the flats.

Meat from the stranded beluga was sent to elders. One Inupiat mother canned some for her son, a serviceman in Iraq.

The beluga belong to a genetically isolated population of about 350 beluga in the Cook Inlet that are registered as depleted under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Native hunters can take only one or two whales per year under an agreement with the federal government.

September 5, 2003

Poor Aqpik harvest in Finland

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE

The Finnish food industry may stop producing some items that contain cloudberries, or aqpiks, this year after a poor harvest has made the berries too expensive.

Cloudberry-pickers were paid a minimum of 10 euros ($14) per kilogram this year.

Cloudberries are difficult to cultivate as the pistil and stamens are usually in different plants. In other words, there must be both types present in each area. Also, insects are required for the pollination, and insects are not active in cold weather.

But some Finnish farms are doing their best to cultivate the berries and bring their price down. A few farms are already growing cloudberry seedlings on marshy fields, and the first harvest should be available for market in a couple of years.

This could guarantee the future supply and stable price of the berries.

Thule pollution limited

Contaminants are present in the waters near the Thule Air Base in northern Greenland but they are limited to a small area, according to a recently published report by the Danish Environmental Research Institute.

The report, which examined 486 samples from the area north of the Dundas peninsula, concluded there is a high level of PCB contamination in clams in the area. In fact, the level of PCB contamination is two to 30 times higher than normal.

However, the study maintains that the impact of the contamination is limited to an area five to 10 kilometres from the base. It says the higher concentrations won't be found in fish or marine mammals that are normally reserved for human consumption.

"Elevated PCB concentrations at Thule Air Base are not likely to affect the concentrations in seals, because their feeding areas are large and because they feed on a variety of species," it says.

Nunatsiavummiut sign land claim deal

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS SERVICE

Labrador Inuit signed a $300-million land claim deal last Friday, creating a self-governing region and ending more than 25 years of negotiations.

It is the last land claim agreement to be signed by an Inuit region in Canada. Highlights include:

• $140 million cash to the Labrador Inuit Association.
• $156 million in implementation funds and funding for education, health and social programs.
• Establishment of a 72,500-kilometre Nunatsiavut region where Inuit will have "priority harvesting rights" with 15,800 square kilometres of Inuit-owned lands.
• Creation of the Torngat Mountain National Park Reserve.
• Creation of self-governing authority, the Inuit Central Government, in Hopedale and Nain.

The implementation of the deal will start in early 2004.

Thule case dropped

Thule hunters had to shelve their case against the Danish government this week because their lawyer says he can't afford to go on.

Christian Harlang represented Hingitaq 53, the group of 187 hunters who were displaced to Qaanaaq, Greenland, in 1953 for the construction of the Thule Air Base.

He was representing the hunters in their efforts to settle ownership of the expropriated land and the issue of hunting rights.

But Harlang said he couldn't afford to represent the hunters any longer, pointing out the Crown lawyer received three times as much money for legal expenses than he did.

Hingitaq 53 issued a statement saying it was "intolerable" that their lawyer was given such inadequate resources.

"Of course we don't wish that the Thule case is going to be stopped. But we don't have anything else to do now," Ussarqak Qujaukitsoq, chairman of Hingitaq 53, told Greenland's Atuagagdliutit newspaper. "We cannot afford to keep him, so we had to stop it. And we are very sad about it."

Aqqaluk Lynge, vice-president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, is furious. He plans to ask the executive of the home rule government to ask the Supreme Court for equal treatment for lawyers in the Thule case.

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