text: Baffin Bay population. The IUCN says that the initial estimate (1984-1989) for this subpopulation was 300 to 600 bears. A second survey (1993 to 1997) estimated this declining population to be 2,074 bears. Please note that the previous two sentences are not the result of some bizarre typo. The extremely low initial numbers were presumably due to a flawed methodology (data collected in the spring in which the capture effort was restricted to shore-fast ice and the floe edge off northeast Baffin Island while recent work has shown that an unknown proportion of the subpopulation is typically offshore during the spring) How can the IUCN confidently conclude that this subpopulation is decreasing? Because the current (2004) estimate based on simulations is that the population is 1,600 bears. The reason for the decline is that the subpopulation appears to be substantially over-harvested. One of the reasons that it is over-harvested is that in 2004 Nunavut increased its hunting quota from 64 to 105 bears per year because reports from Inuit hunters that polar bear numbers in BB had grown substantially. Note that nowhere in this Orwellian story is the decrease in the Baffin Bay polar bear population blamed on receding summer ice due to global warming.