Satellites images might be able to replace aerial counts of polar bears in some places — if there are no clouds. But it seldom distinguishes cubs and can’t tell males from females, found a 2012 study of Foxe Basin bears that’s just been published.
Note: This is my 200th post since July 26, 2012!
Comments Off on Counting bears from space can be just as accurate as by helicopter, claims new study
Posted in Population
Tagged aerial survey, cubs, Foxe Basin, helicopter survey, polar bear, population estimates, Rowley Island, satellite images, sea ice, September ice minimum, Seth Stapleton, USGS
In the last few days, ice coverage on Western Hudson Bay finally dropped below the 30% level that now defines ‘breakup’ for polar bears: a few bears near Churchill started to come ashore late last week but most will stay on the ice until the end of July. That means breakup this year was unofficially July 8th, a week later than average (July 1) for the third year in a row.
Don’t’ tell that to the folks at Polar Bears International, though, because they’re busy telling people that the ice-free season for Western Hudson Bay bears is now longer than it was before the 1990s. What they mean is that the overall trend is toward early breakup dates.
But what they don’t admit is that over the last 44 years, breakup was a full two weeks earlier than average for Western Hudson Bay only six times and only three of those early breakups occurred within the last 13 years. See the calculations below and see what you think.
Comments Off on Breakup date average for W. Hudson Bay is July 1 – this year, it’s late again
Posted in Sea ice habitat
Tagged average breakup date, breakup, Canadian Ice Service, Churchill, early breakup, ice charts, Kelsey Eliasson, late breakup, Polar Bear Provincial Park, prolonged ice-free season, Seth Cherry, Wapusk National Park, western hudson bay
Christina Wu at the Urban Times (July 3, 2014) recently asked this question. She came up with a surprisingly balanced argument but some predictable responses from IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) biologists. As a consequence, she overlooked some critical facts that make a big difference to the answer.
Figure 1. Predictions of polar bear population declines by 2050 are being used by the Center for Biological Diversity, WWF and Polar Bears International to solicit donations.
UPDATED 18 May 2015 – see below.
Comments Off on Are Polar Bears Really Endangered?
Posted in Conservation Status, Population
Tagged Amstrup, Center for Biological Diversity, Chukchi Sea, computer models, endangered species, global warming, IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, more polar bears, PBSG, Peacock, polar bear, population increase, predictions, sea ice decline, Southern Hudson Bay, threatened with extinction, western hudson bay, York
Here is the June 2014 follow-up to my post on the July 2013 track map for female polar bears being followed by satellite in the Beaufort Sea by the US Geological Survey (USGS) – “Ten out of ten polar bears being tracked this summer in the Beaufort Sea are on the ice.”
See that post for methods and other background on this topic, and some track maps from 2012 (also available at the USGS website here).
The USGS track map for June 2004 is copied below (Fig. 1).
Compare this to May’s map (Fig. 2) – the 20 bears from last month are down to 14, and all seven of the bears outfitted with glue-on satellite transmitters in April [either males or subadult animals] have either moved out of the area or their tags have fallen off or stopped transmitting. This means that all of the bears shown on the June map below are females with satellite radio collars.
Continue reading
Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea: June 2014 map
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Alaska, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, polar bear movements, polar bears, satellite collars, sea ice, Southern Beaufort, tracking polar bears, USGS
Well, well, well — it looks the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) just had itself another secret meeting with some extra special guests.
Polar bear scientists and PBSG-approved activists got together a few weeks ago (June 9-13), with no notice beforehand, “to continue discussions how (sic) to solve issues of future capacity.”
This was their “second intersessional members-only meeting in a row” (the first one was in October 2012), but they still haven’t had their regular, now long-overdue, “working meeting.” [they had the last one in 2009].
I came upon a notice about this meeting on the PBSG website, which apparently went up June 26, while looking for something else. There has been nothing about it in the media that I’ve seen.
And guess who were “invited specialists” at this meeting of “members-only,” called “to discuss internal matters crucial for the future functioning and capacity of the group”?
Three “climate scientists“!
Comments Off on Polar Bear Specialist Group just had another secret meeting
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Population
Tagged climate change, climate scientists, global warming, Jennifer Kay, Marika Holland, Mark Serreze, PGSG, polar bear, polar bear estimates, Polar Bear Specialist Group, Russia, TEK, traditional ecological knowledge
I came across a story in the news yesterday about the discovery of an archaeological site in northeastern Manitoba that brings to mind a post I wrote back in November 2012 on the geological and archaeological history of Hudson Bay.
As I noted then, most of the archaeological sites found on or near the coast of Hudson Bay are about 1,000 years old or less – and this new site fits that pattern perfectly.
A news report at the CBC (June 30, 2014) carried this description of the find, at a site called Hubbard Point, which sounds like it could yield polar bear remains: Continue reading
Comments Off on How long have polar bears – and people – lived around Hudson Bay?
Posted in History
Tagged archaeological site, archaeology, bones, history, Hudson Bay, Inuit, Manitoba, polar bear, tent rings, Virginia Petch, western hudson bay
I just went back to Andy Revkin’s blog post on the swimming polar bear video story that I wrote about on Wednesday to see what kind of feedback it was getting. I found that it pays to check up.
A reader from Oregon questioned the filming techniques used for this video.
Revkin followed up.
And it turned out, the reader from Oregon was correct — the film used in this video was shot with “an assortment of traditional methods,” not with the strapped on cameras that the USGS were using on the bears.
Revkin assumed from the background provided to him that this was leading-edge technology, bear-generated video. And even though he’d interviewed the filmmaker, the truth hadn’t come out.
Update June 29, 2014 – another damning comment made, added below.
Comments Off on Swimming bear video used for propaganda was not shot with bear-mounted cameras
Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Adam Ravetch, Arctic Exploration Fund, bear-mounted cameras, DotEarth, polar bears, POV video, propaganda, Revkin, swimming polar bears, underwater video, USGS
A video being hyped around the internet – “Witness a polar bear’s heartbreaking swim for ice in the Arctic” said one headline – is simply shameless propaganda, facilitated by the US Geological Survey and its polar bear biologists. USGS scientists involved in this work should be ashamed of themselves.
The caption for the Youtube video (published Jun 21, 2014) says this:
Take a swim with a polar bear family as they traverse the Arctic Ocean in search of sea ice.
This is a load of nonsense and a total misrepresentation of the facts.
In addition, the text added to the video is pure propaganda: it is being used to promote the US government position that sea ice loss due to climate change is a massive threat to polar bears. Unfortunately, recent studies contradict the contention that polar bears have already been harmed by declines in summer sea ice.
Here are some background to the video you should be aware of:
1) The bears were swimming away from the USGS researchers and film crew who had shot them full of sedatives and attached a camera to one of their necks — they were not swimming toward sea ice 100 miles away.
2) The video was shot in the Bering Sea, in April 2014, when sea ice was about its maximum extent of the year — there was lots of ice around when this video was filmed.
3) The company doing the filming is using this video as a fundraiser.
Details below, including a sea ice map for April 2014.
UPDATE June 27, 2014 – see follow-up post here.
Comments Off on Swimming bear video used to promote climate change threat to polar bears
Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Adam Ravetch, Arctic Bear Productions, Bering Sea, climate change, DotEarth, polar bear, polar bears, POV video, propaganda, Revkin, swimming polar bears, USGS, youtube video
Again this year – contrary to predictions – there has been no early breakup of the sea ice on Hudson Bay and even though it’s the height of summer, there is plenty of ice throughout the Arctic to act as a feeding platform for polar bears. This makes it unlikely there will be a longer-than-average summer fast for polar bears again this year.
Figure 1. NSIDC MASIE map for June 21, 2014.
Sea ice maps around the Arctic for June 21 (and June 24, for Hudson Bay) reviewed and discussed below in relation to polar bear habitat — have a look.
Comments Off on Spring/summer sea ice bonanza for polar bears – conditions excellent again for 2014
Posted in Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Chukchi Sea, critical feeding period, early summer ice coverage, Hudson Bay breakup, Jon Aars, polar bear, polar bear habitat, sea ice maps, spring sea ice, summer fast, Svalbard, Svalbard cubs, western hudson bay
Media agency Aljazeera gave free advertizing the other day (June 16, 2014, “New TV ads focus on plight of polar bears in warming world,” by Renee Lewis) to the Center for Biological Diversity’s TV fear-mongering campaign about polar bears.
USFWS photo
With unmitigated gall, it’s being billed as a “public service announcement.”
Continue reading
Comments Off on Center for Biological Diversity provides a public disservice on polar bear status
Posted in Advocacy, Cannibalism, Conservation Status
Tagged Aljazeera, animal tragedy porn, appeals to emotion, brink of extinction, CBD, Center for Biological Diversity, extinction, fear-mongering, global warming, Kieran Suckling, plight of the polar bear, polar bear, predictions, public service announcement, scam, TV ads
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