Arctic thaw leaves Inuit lost for words

WHAT are the words used by indigenous peoples in the Arctic for hornet, robin, elk, barn owl or salmon? If you don’t know, you’re not alone.

Many indigenous languages have no words for legions of new animals, insects and plants advancing north as global warming thaws the polar ice and lets forests creep over tundra.

“We can’t even describe what we’re seeing,” said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference which says it represents 155,000 people in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.

An eight-nation report this month says the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and the North Pole could be ice-free in northern hemisphere summer by 2100, threatening indigenous cultures and perhaps wiping out creatures like polar bears. The report, funded by the US, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, puts most of the blame on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from human use of fossil fuels like coal and oil.

Foreign ministers from the eight Arctic countries are due to meet in Reykjavik tomorrow but are sharply divided about what to do. The US is most opposed to any drastic new action.

The Arctic report says polar bears “are unlikely to survive as a species if there is a complete loss of summer-ice cover.” Restricted to land, polar bears would have to compete with better-adapted grizzly or brown bears.

Around the Arctic, salmon are swimming into more northerly waters, hornets are buzzing north and barn owls are flying to regions where indigenous people have never even seen a barn.

“Overall, forests are likely to move north and displace tundra,” said Terry Callaghan, an ecology professor at the University of Lund, Sweden. “That will bring more species - birds, beetles and fungi.”