Category Archives: Sea ice habitat

Polar bear gene flow blamed on melting ice is another model result that doesn’t make sense

Posted on January 9, 2015 | Comments Off

Polar bear researchers just published a study that suggests polar bears have moved around the Arctic in direct response to recent sea ice changes — a conclusion I suggest you take with a grain of salt and a raised eyebrow.

That’s because they have also proposed, among other things, that the Svalbard Archipelago was a sea ice refugium during warm interglacial periods, and could be again if the Arctic warms as predicted. That they would accept and promote such a model-based conclusion, which has no relationship with reality, calls their scientific judgment into question.

Svalbard as a potential warm refugium_Jan 8 2015_PolarBearScience

Based on genetic model results, the Svalbard Archipelago (circled) has been proposed as a sea ice refugium for polar bears during previous warm Interglacial periods and during predicted sea ice declines in the future. Yet most years since 1979 (2014 was one exception), this region has been ice free during the summer, making Svalbard a decidedly poor candidate for retaining sea ice when it’s much warmer than today.

Comments Off on Polar bear gene flow blamed on melting ice is another model result that doesn’t make sense

Posted in Population, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Cronin, DNA, extinction, gene flow, genetics, Hamilton, Miller, models, PBSG, Peacock, polar bear, Polyak, predictions, refugium, sea ice, warming Arctic

Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea – December 2014 map

Posted on January 6, 2015 | Comments Off

Here is the December 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 December is copied below.

There are only 10 bears being followed now, which means a few more collars have failed, or the bears have moved out of the area or died.
Continue reading

Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea – December 2014 map

Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, polar bear habitat, polar bear movements, polar bears, polar bears in winter, satellite collars, sea ice, Southern Beaufort, tracking polar bears, USGS

IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group out-lived its usefulness 20 years ago

Posted on January 1, 2015 | Comments Off

The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) should have been disbanded in 1996, the year polar bears were down-graded from a status of ‘vulnerable to extinction’ to ‘lower risk – conservation dependent’ (now called ‘least concern’) on the IUCN Red List.

Bumpersticker from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, courtesy Joe Prins.

Polar bears had recovered from previous decades of wanton over-hunting — by all measures used by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, they were a conservation success story.

Why did the IUCN and Arctic governments not break up the PBSG back in 1996? Leaving the group intact once polar bears were down-graded to ‘least concern’ simply made its members desperate to justify their existence. That’s precisely what we’ve seen over the last 20 years — PBSG members working tirelessly to ensure the organization didn’t go extinct.

In fact, polar bears are in no more danger of extinction now than they were in 1996, despite dedicated efforts of the PBSG to convince the world otherwise. Take a look at the history and see if you come to a different conclusion.
Continue reading

Comments Off on IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group out-lived its usefulness 20 years ago

Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat

Tagged activists, Arctic nations, CBD, conservation status, data deficient, extinction, IUCN, IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, least consern, PBSG, polar bear, sea ice models, spin, survival, threatened, vulnerable

Polar bear habitat – more Arctic sea ice in Canada this week than in early 1970s

Posted on December 26, 2014 | Comments Off

This week, Arctic sea ice in Canada, where 2/3 of the world’s polar bears live, had more sea ice than was present in the early 1970s. Globally, the ice is spitting-distance close to the 1981-2010 average calculated by the NSIDC for this date – which means lots of winter/spring hunting habitat for polar bears.

This is the peak of the polar bear birthing season (both in the wild and in zoos.) Newborns will be snug in maternity dens built by their mothers onshore or on the sea ice; the rest of the population will be out on the ice.

Regional ice charts going back to the late 1960s and early 1970s for this week show even more surprises — have a look.

Comments Off on Polar bear habitat – more Arctic sea ice in Canada this week than in early 1970s

Posted in Sea ice habitat

Tagged baffin bay, Davis Strait, Eastern Beaufort, Eastern Canada, Hudson Bay, ice extent, polar bear, polar bear habitat, polar bears in winter, sea ice, Southern Beaufort, Western Arctic

Challenging NOAA’s “Arctic Report Card 2014” on polar bears

Posted on December 19, 2014 | Comments Off

NOAA’s list of purported evidence for harm being caused to polar bears by Arctic warming is short and weak. It puts the gloomiest spin possible on the current well-being of an animal with all the earmarks of a healthy, well-distributed species.

This year, polar bears are virtually the only species that NOAA mentions in their Arctic Report Card – they’ve put all their icon-eggs in one leaky basket [what happened to walrus??]. But polar bears are doing so well that to make an alarming case for polar bears as victims of Arctic warming, many important caveats had to be left out or misrepresented. Some details given are simply wrong.

This year’s polar bear chapter was penned by IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group chairman Dag Vongraven (you might recall his email to me earlier this year) and a polar bear conservation activist from Polar Bears International (whose battle cry for donations is “Save Our Sea Ice!”), Geoff York.

I challenge their four weak talking points one by one below.

Comments Off on Challenging NOAA’s “Arctic Report Card 2014” on polar bears

Posted in Population, Sea ice habitat, Summary

Tagged Arctic, Arctic Report Card, breakup, Bromaghin, cherry-picking, freeze-up, Geoff York, hybridization, IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, mark-recapture, polar bear, population estimate, red herring, sea ice, Southern Beaufort, thick spring ice, USFWS, Vongraven, western hudson bay

Hudson Bay sea ice well above average – excellent early December polar bear habitat

Posted on December 11, 2014 | Comments Off

Sea ice development for this date is well above average on Hudson Bay – even more so than last week – making three years in a row of average-to-above average ice habitat available to polar bears in early December (see last week’s ice summary here). Coverage for the week of 11 December from 1971 to 2104 below (from Canadian Ice Service):

More maps below (from CIS and NSIDC), see others here.

Comments Off on Hudson Bay sea ice well above average – excellent early December polar bear habitat

Posted in Sea ice habitat

Tagged Canadian Ice Service, Churchill, Davis Strait, December, Hudson Bay, National Snow and Ice Data Center, polar bear habitat, polar bears, polar bears in winter, problem bears, sea ice, western hudson bay

Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea – November 2014 map

Posted on December 7, 2014 | Comments Off

Here is the November 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 November 2014 is copied below.

Figure 1. Original caption: "Movements of 12 satellite-tagged polar bears for the month of November, 2014. Polar bears were tagged in 2014 on the spring-time sea ice of the southern Beaufort Sea. All twelve of these bears have satellite collar transmitters. Polar bear satellite telemetry data are shown with AMSR2 remotely-sensed ice coverage for 30 November, 2014." Click to enlarge, original here.

Original caption: “Movements of 12 satellite-tagged polar bears for the month of November, 2014. Polar bears were tagged in 2014 on the spring-time sea ice of the southern Beaufort Sea. All twelve of these bears have satellite collar transmitters. Polar bear satellite telemetry data are shown with AMSR2 remotely-sensed ice coverage for 30 November, 2014.” Click to enlarge, original here.

All twelve bears (all females) are finally visible on this map, confirming my suspicion that two were so close together they overlapped. Three out of the twelve “Southern Beaufort” bears were in the Chukchi Sea at the end of November (west of Point Lay, see discussion here). If you missed it, my October 2014 post on the progress of these bears has some maps from previous years that are worth reviewing.

Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea – November 2014 map

Posted in Sea ice habitat

Tagged Alaska, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, polar bear habitat, polar bear movements, polar bears, satellite collars, sea ice, Southern Beaufort, tracking polar bears, USGS

Hudson Bay sea ice above average for this date – more good news for polar bears

Posted on December 4, 2014 | Comments Off

It’s only the 4th of December and Hudson Bay ice formation is way up over late 2000s coverage for this date — and higher than 2012, which had the lowest overall September ice extent for the Arctic since 1978.

This means boom times for Western and Southern Hudson Bay polar bears as sea ice formation is several days to a week ahead of last year. And as I mentioned in my last post, average November ice coverage across the Arctic this year was higher than 2003. Don’t forget that 2/3’s of the world’s polar bears live in Canada (see recent status update here; map below).

Figure 4. The Davis Strait (DS) subpopulation region runs from just below the Arctic Circle at the north end to at least 470N in the south. About half of DS lays at the same latitude as Western Hudson Bay (WH). Courtesy Environment Canada.

Polar bear population status in Canada. Courtesy Environment Canada.

More maps and charts below.
Continue reading →

Comments Off on Hudson Bay sea ice above average for this date – more good news for polar bears

Posted in Sea ice habitat

Tagged baffin bay, CIS, Davis Strait, Foxe Basin, freeze-up, historical sea ice record, Hudson Bay ice formation, ice extent, NSIDC, polar bear, polar bear habitat, sea ice, Southern Hudson Bay, western hudson bay

Polar bear habitat update – November 2014 average sea ice levels higher than 2003

Posted on December 3, 2014 | Comments Off

Average polar bear habitat for November 2014 was well within two standard deviations¹ and higher than 2003, according to the November report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (line and labels added, below).

Notice that the lowest average November level occurred in 2006 — not 2007 (after the second lowest September extent since 1978) and not 2012 (after the lowest September extent since 1978). Take note that the scale on the graph above does not go to zero but to a whopping ~9.5 million square km!

Quotes from the NSIDC monthy report and sea ice maps for November 2014 and 2 December 2014 below.

UPDATE 3 December 2014: CIS has issued a new ice map corrected for ice level on Hudson Bay – new map below.
Continue reading

Comments Off on Polar bear habitat update – November 2014 average sea ice levels higher than 2003

Posted in Sea ice habitat

Tagged arctic sea ice, Chukchi Sea, CIS, Davis Strait, Hudson Bay, NSIDC, polar bear, polar bear habit, sea ice extent, September ice minimum, standard deviation

Amstrup knows his polar bear predictions are flawed – but continues to promote them

Posted on November 29, 2014 | Comments Off

The largest conservation organization in the world says that predictive models developed by polar bear biologist Steven Amstrup are utterly unsuitable for scientifically estimating future populations. Earlier this year, mathematical modeling experts at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, who maintain the Red List of Threatened Species, made it clear that Amstrup’s models (used in 2008 to convince the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list polar bears as ‘threatened’ due to predicted global warming) do not meet IUCN standards.

I’d say this makes Amstrup’s polar bear projections (Amstrup et al. 2008, 2010) no more scientifically useful than a crystal ball prophesy, but you wouldn’t know it by his recent actions — or the silence of his fellows.