Large haulouts of walruses — such as the one making news at Point Lay, Alaska on the Chukchi Sea (and which happened before back in 2009) — are not a new phenomenon for this region over the last 45 years and thus cannot be due to low sea ice levels. Nor are deaths by stampede within these herds (composed primarily of females and their young) unusual, as a brief search of the literature reveals.
The attempts by WWF and others to link this event to global warming is self-serving nonsense that has nothing to do with science.
UPDATE October 3, 2014: See below. Also, do see follow-up posts here, here, and especially, here.
UPDATE October 23, 2014: A briefing paper summary is here and a video version of that paper (“The Walrus Fuss” — 3 1/2 minutes long) here.
There is also a follow-up post on the situation here.
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