Last year, the Gilgs observed polar bears on the Henrik Krøyer Holme Islands in northeast Greenland. Every summer, the predators come to the islands in search of their favorite prey. "Seals cavort there on the beaches and on the sea ice," Gilg explains.
The Inuit of northwest Greenland call the polar bears "great wanderers," and science has proven them right. A female tagged on Spitsbergen turned up in the town of Nanortalik in southern Greenland -- 3,200 kilometers (1,987 miles) -- a year later.
Scientists are divided over how threatened polar bears really are. This May, after a prolonged controversy, the United States added the polar bear to its list of endangered species. But the situation is complicated. Seven of the populations being studied are either growing or stable, while five are shrinking. While a dramatic decline is predicted, it is not expected to happen until sometime in the future. "The polar bear is more capable of surviving for two to three months with reduced sea ice than other animals," says Gilg.
An example of a species that is truly endangered, however, is the ivory gull. After Gilg has put his son to bed, the animal researchers spend yet another sunny polar night on the lookout. They have set out nets for ivory gulls baited with the foul-smelling flesh of a young seal that died a few days ago near the airstrip. Now their job is to wait until their subject turns up. The resilient birds, with their bright white feathers, are like an early warning system for change in the Arctic. "Scientifically more interesting than the polar bear," says Gilg.
According to Gilg, changes are clearly visible in the ivory gull. "It eats the carcasses of seals and fish on the sea ice," Gilg explains. If the sea ice disappears, the gull will be forced to leave. There were still 25,000 pairs living in the Arctic in the early 1980s. Today they have all but disappeared on Spitsbergen and in southern Greenland.
Suddenly Gilg jumps up. A gull has walked into the trap. Everyone rushes outside. Even Arctic manager Almqvist is there to watch the bird peck at Adrian Aebischer's hands with its sharp beak. "It's a young animal," he says, after counting the wing feathers. A satellite transmitter is attached to the screeching bird's back. Then Gilg uses a cotton swab to remove a saliva sample from the beak. "We analyze the genetic material," he explains. "It allows us to estimate the size of the current population."
The ecologists are not optimistic. The melting ice is forcing the ivory gull to retreat farther and farther to the north. "And at the end of Greenland, they run out of places to go," says the Frenchman as he releases the white bird and watches it fly off into the deep blue sky.
Resolute, Canadian Arctic
74° 42' North, 94° 50' West
Saroomie Manik is the mayor of the small community of Resolute on Cornwallis Island. The hamlet's name comes from a sailing ship with the same name that was stranded there 155 years ago. But it could just as well describe the character of this petite, wiry woman.
Like Manik, most of the residents of Resolute are Inuit. "The ice has become thinner," says the mayor. The Inuit go hunting earlier every year. "Otherwise our snowmobiles would break through the ice," says Manik.
Manik, who is almost 60, still hunts. Alone. She shot her last polar bear two years ago. "I cut him open on the spot and loaded him onto the sled," she says, emitting a staccato-like laugh.
Among the Inuit, it is primarily the women who are trying to preserve as much as possible of their original way of life. The experiences they have had in one or two generations are the equivalent of a free fall from the Stone Age into the Modern Age.
"I still know how to use our traditional ovens," Manik says proudly. The Inuit burned blubber in the ovens, which kept them warm in their igloos during bitter-cold polar nights. "All my kids know about is the microwave," she adds.
Climate and cultural change are distorting the coordinates of Inuit life, which once followed the rhythms of nature: the reproductive cycles of seals and whales, light and darkness, ice and the open sea.
The plight of the Inuit is tragic. In 2005, the Canadian government granted them sovereign rights over the regions they had traditionally settled, and their officials in Greenland are pushing for autonomy. The mineral wealth beneath their homeland could make them rich. But so far this new world has been more of a curse for them than anything else.
Manik, a mother of five sons and two daughters, knows the seductive powers of this invasive culture all too well: the sweet candy bars, the spongy white bread and, most of all, the alcohol. Obesity is widespread among the original inhabitants of the Arctic, and the suicide rate is extremely high. And now they are faced with climate change.
Manik wants to save as much as possible of her traditional roots. Keeping her head held high, she leads a group of young Inuit girls as they spin around the room, dancing a traditional dance in their blue-and-white embroidered costumes. They sing the peculiar guttural songs with which Inuit women once beguiled their men -- before they began watching TV.
After the performance, Manik says: "When you white people think about nature, the first thing you want to do is change it!" She says she doesn't understand how it all works with the emissions, the ones that are supposedly heating up the planet's atmosphere.
But she does know one thing: The people from the south, who have come here with their destructive ways, have a sinister power. "Maybe you can't imagine it," she says, "but we consider the polar bear part of the family."
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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