'Arctic ice threat'

“The Arctic is a very harsh environment,” Canada's chief of defense staff, General Walter Natynczyk, said last month.

“If someone were to invade the Canadian Arctic, my first task would be to rescue them,” he said.

While there may not be an armed conflict in sight, global warming has already claimed victims.

It has dramatically changed the lives of the 400,000 indigenous people who live in the region and who depend on fishing and hunting for their livelihood.

Ice that forms later in the year and melts earlier each year shortens the Inuits' hunting season.

Some hunters have drowned, either caught off guard by thin ice or carried away by torrential currents. Others have had to slaughter their sled dogs because they can't hunt enough food to feed them.

“We are people who not only survive, we thrive on the ice and snow,” said Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier.

Please turn to page 2 Global warming is accelerated in the Arctic because of the concept known as reflexivity.

Ice reflects more than 80 percent of the sun's radiation back into the atmosphere. When the sea ice melts, the dark water does not reflect the heat but instead absorbs it, thereby accentuating the effect of global warming.

In Lapland, the alternating freezes and thaws make it harder for reindeer herders to shuttle their herds to winter pastures.

And some species, such as barn owls, robins and mosquitoes, are moving further north into new habitats.

“The native species now find themselves competing with the new arrivals for survival, and they themselves can't flee further north,” Prestrud explained.

Even the king of icecap - and the food chain - is at threat.

By 2050, two-thirds of the Arctic's 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears could disappear because of the melting ice, where the bears hunt seals, according to experts.

They have also observed a rise in cases of cannibalism, attributed to the polar bears' difficulty finding food.

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