Dozens of families in Sanikiluaq, an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic, are combing the terrain for one of nature’s marvels — eiderdown, the warmest natural fibre.
The down of the eider, an Arctic duck found in Canada, Norway and Iceland, costs thousands of pounds a kilogram. It is harvested for a few weeks each year and after only three weeks the 2021 season is drawing to a close.
For hundreds of years the feathers have underpinned the survival of the Inuit of Hudson Bay. Climate change, which is driving hungry polar bears on to land, poses a significant threat to the ducks and their valuable down.
Female eiders, which have dark brown plumage and black stripes, scrape down from their breasts to keep eggs and ducklings warm. The feathers are uniquely light, durable and warm. The global annual harvest is four tonnes, enough to fill a box van. About 75 per cent comes from Iceland, where hundreds of farmers comb rock, sand and tall grass to find a few handfuls.
An estimated 60 nests are required to produce a kilogram of down, which makes a medium-sized quilt. Duvets sell for up to $16,000 (£11,470) each.
Advertisement
In Nunavut, Canada’s vast Arctic territory, the birds create tens of thousands of nests from March. Foragers, who use the down to make parkas and blankets, gather it before ducklings have hatched, taking care to leave enough to incubate the eggs.
The fluffy feathers are cleaned and sterilised. Joel Heath, a scientist based in Sanikiluaq and executive director of the Arctic Eider Society, said that the work was familiar to the Sanikiluaq.
Heath’s documentary film, People of a Feather, explores the community’s relationship with the eider. The feathers are facing a grave threat, however, from polar bears.
For 30 years, the Arctic has been warming at three times the global rate. The Canadian government says that the Hudson Strait is free of ice for two months longer each year.
That pushes polar bears, which hunt fatty seals on ice, on to land for longer each year, where they prey upon eider colonies. Experts say that even then the apex predators do not consume enough calories for long-term survival.
Advertisement
“We went to one area with tens of thousands of eiders but polar bears had wiped out their nests,” Heath said. “They ate every single egg on the island. Climate change is increasing these encounters.”
The birds are also threatened by hydropower projects near by in Quebec, which pour fresh water into the ocean, disrupting delicate ecosystems.
“The eiders are kind of the canary in the coal mine for environmental monitoring,” said Heath, who uses drones and satellites to analyse Arctic sea ice retreat.
Beyond the cultural significance of eiderdown, Heath prizes the protection it offers from Nunavut’s winters. “I ditched all my southern clothing the first winter I got up here,” he said. He claimed that his eiderdown parka was the warmest coat he had ever had.
