Tag Archives: future threats

Polar bears that didn’t die from recent sea ice loss will die in 35 yrs, say ‘sperts

Posted on December 7, 2016 | Comments Off

Yesterday, the DailyMail (among others) was suckered into running virtually the same story The Guardian (among others) hyped last year about this time.

Using a science journal version of the 2015 IUCN Red List assessment report, polar bear data collectors and their fortune-teller colleagues have managed to get polar bears back in the news.

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I wrote about this last year – it’s actually good news, although you wouldn’t know it from the headlines.

Let me paraphrase the ‘sperts:

“After 10 years of ice conditions we didn’t expect would happen until mid-century (a worst-case scenario we said would cause more than 30% of the world’s polar bears to die – except they didn’t), we have now determined (using a new model and a brand new definition of sea ice specific to polar bears) that by mid-century, there is only a 70% chance that 30% of polar bears will die.”

This is how they explain away all the bears that didn’t die as they should have when summer sea ice declined to about 5 mkm2 and below after 2006.

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Posted in Conservation Status, Uncategorized

Tagged crystal ball, ESA, experts, future threats, polar bear, predictions, Red list, Regehr, sea ice, USGS

Editorial calls for more jobs for polar bear biologists

Posted on January 22, 2015 | Comments Off

An editorial in the Edmonton Journal this morning (“Stand on guard for polar bears”) takes a most extraordinary position: that the results of two recent papers of dubious value should motivate Canada to create more jobs for polar bear biologists, “protect” the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (from what, they don’t say), and galvanize Canada’s position with respect to curtailing carbon dioxide emissions. In that order.

Edmonton Journal editorial photo 22 January 2015. Munich Zoo bears.

First, the unnamed editors¹ say: “This country needs more eyes and ears monitoring the health, numbers and locations of its polar bear populations.”

Why would they come to that conclusion? They quote University of Alberta’s Andrew Derocher (who supervises a number of students doing polar bear research in Western Hudson Bay):

“If Canada was doing the right thing, we’d have extensive monitoring,” University of Alberta polar bear researcher Andrew Derocher said to the Journal in late 2014.”

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Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat

Tagged advocacy, Canada, climate change, Derocher, ESA, future threats, global warming, Hamilton, Hawkins, IPCC AR5, jobs, journalists, last refuge, Peacock, polar bear, population assessments, predictions, sea ice decline, threatened, worst-case scenario

‘Threatened’ status for Arctic ringed seals under ESA makes no sense

Posted on January 14, 2015 | Comments Off

Recent research (Crawford and Quakenbush 203; Rode et al. 2014) has shown that sea ice declines in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas have made life better for ringed seals, not worse (as predicted) – ringed seals are in better condition and reproducing better than they were in the 1970s. Why? Ringed seals do most of their feeding in the open-water period (Young and Ferguson 2013), so a longer open-water season means fatter, healthier seals and more fat pups for polar bears to hunt the following spring.

However, Arctic ringed seals (as well as bearded seals) were designated as ‘threatened’ by the USA in 2012 under the Endangered Species Act, based on predicted ice and snow declines due to prophesied global warming. These listings are all about future threats, with no pretense of on-going harm.

Virtually no other Arctic nation has taken this step for Arctic seals — see previous discussion here. There are lots of ringed seals — an estimated 3-4 million world-wide and about 1.7 million within the critical habitat proposed by NOAA (see below).

As weak as the case for listing polar bears as ‘threatened’ has proven to be, the case for listing ringed and bearded seals is even more feeble (a judge has already sent the bearded seal listing back to the drawing board).
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Posted in Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat

Tagged bearded seal, Beaufort Sea, Bering Sea, Chukchi Sea, conservation, critical habitat, endangered species, future threats, global warming, IUCN, models, NOAA, polar bear, predictions, public hearings, ringed seal, sea ice, threatened