Activists have again resorted to using documentary film to promote Pacific walrus haulout deaths as contrived “proof” of gruesome climate change impacts even as evidence emerges that walrus numbers are higher than at any other time since the late 1970s. Oops! Busted by facts yet again!
Comments Off on Activists try to reboot Pacific walrus as climate change icons just as numbers reach a new high
Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat, walrus
Tagged activist, Attenborough, Cape Serdtse-Kamen, Chakilev, deaths, documentary, haulout, Netflix, population size, Russia, trampling, walrus, WWF
There has been abundant sea ice in the Chukchi Sea this summer: so much so that walrus herds have not found it necessary to use beaches on the Alaskan coast as resting haulouts. Now, in early September, almost the entire northern Chukotka coast is covered in ice, blocking use of those beaches that have been traditionally used in September through November. Wrangel Island (an important denning area for polar bears) is still almost surrounded by ice, which hasn’t happened in decades.
Just two years ago, a big deal was made of the fact that the entire coast of Alaska was ice-free by early August and that walrus herds had come ashore at Point Lay earlier than any year since 2007 – all put down to climate change. Last year, walrus started to come ashore one day earlier than in 2019, on July 29. Although no one has presented any evidence that the walrus are suffering in any way due to using beach haulouts during the ice-free season (MacCracken et al. 2017), the haulouts are still presented as bad news and portends of catastrophe to come.
This year is a totally different story and of course, the biologists are suddenly silent.
Continue readingComments Off on Abundant Chukchi Sea ice explains silence on walrus haulouts in Alaska and Russia so far
Posted in Sea ice habitat, walrus
Tagged Attenborough, beaches, Cape Schmidt, Chukchi Sea, haulout, Our Planet, sea ice, walrus
US Fish and Wildlife officials in 1994 explain walruses falling to their deaths from a cliff at Cape Pierce in the southern Bering Sea (a haulout for adult males during the ice-free season). Explanation? Overcrowding (too many walruses)!
Hype from the Netflix/Attenborough ‘climate change is gonna destroy the world’ fearmongers earlier this year notwithstanding – or the media this summer trying to stir up climate change fever – the US Fish and Wildlife Service determined in October 2017 that the Pacific walrus is not being harmed by climate change and is not likely to be harmed within the foreseeable future (USFWS 2017). The IUCN Red List (2015) lists the Pacific walrus as ‘data deficient‘.
Large herds onshore are a sign of population health, not climate change, and walruses have come ashore in the Chukchi Sea during the ice-free season in summer and/or fall for more than 100 years (Crockford 2014; Fischbach et al. 2016; Lowrey 1985). Those are the relevant scientific facts.
Crockford, S. J. 2014a. On the Beach: Walrus Haulouts are Nothing New. Global Warming Policy Foundation Briefing Paper 11. Pdf here. http://www.thegwpf.org/susan-crockford-on-the-beach-2/
Crockford, S. J. 2014b.The Walrus Fuss: Walrus Haulouts are Nothing New https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwaAwsS2OOY 23 Oct 2014. [15,141 views at 31 Aug 2019]
Fischbach, A.S., Kochnev, A.A., Garlich-Miller, J.L., and Jay, C.V. 2016. Pacific walrus coastal haulout database, 1852–2016—Background report: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2016–1108. http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20161108. The online database is found here.
Lowry, L. 1985. “Pacific Walrus – Boom or Bust?” Alaska Fish & Game Magazine July/August: 2-5. pdf here.
MacCracken, J.G., Beatty, W.S., Garlich-Miller, J.L., Kissling, M.L and Snyder, J.A. 2017. Final Species Status Assessment for the Pacific Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens), May 2017 (Version 1.0). US Fish & Wildlife Service, Anchorage, AK. Pdf here (8.6 mb).
USFWS 2017. “Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; 12-Month Findings on Petitions to List 25 Species as Endangered or Threatened Species” [pdf] 4 October
Comments Off on Walruses climbing cliffs and falling off them are natural events: 1994 video from Alaska
Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat, Summary, walrus
Tagged Alaska, cliffs, climate change, facts, falling, global warming, haulout, Netflix, video, walrus
For those who missed it on Wednesday, here is the text of my essay on the walrus fiasco published in the Financial Post section of Canada’s National Post. A map of the region under discussion is here.
Susan J. Crockford April 24, 2019 9:46 AM EDT
Now that polar bears have failed to die off in response to a sea-ice decline as promised, climate alarmists are looking hard for a new icon. They think they’ve found it in the walrus. And for their purpose, walruses are more useful dead than alive, and best of all splattered against sharp rocks from a great height. Continue reading
Comments Off on In case you missed it, the text of my Financial Post essay on Netflix false walrus message
Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat, Summary, walrus
Tagged Attenborough, climate change, global warming, haulout, Lanfear, National Geographic, Netflix, opinion, Our Planet, polar bear, sea ice, starving polar bear, tragedy porn, walrus, WWF
Netflix is lying about those falling walruses. It’s another ‘tragedy porn’ climate hoax
Opinion: Netflix and the WWF are misleading the public in the name of climate change — just as National Geographic did with the emaciated polar bear [24 April 2019]
read it here.
I’ll post the full text in a few days for those who hit a paywall: see it here.
Just a reminder of the geographic locations of the action in the Russian portion of the Chukchi Sea: The cliff where the falling walruses were filmed was at Cape Kozhevnikov and the beach haulout of >100,000 animals was almost certainly Cape Serdtse-Kamen. There is often another haulout at Vankarem, described in the USGS Pacific walrus coastal haulout database.
Comments Off on My opinion piece in the Financial Post on Netflix splattering walrus film footage
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat, walrus
Tagged Attenborough, Chukchil Sea, climate change, fake news, false narrative, haulout, icon, Netflix, opinion, polar bear, Russia, sea ice, walrus, WWF
Last week, I called “contrived nonsense” on the claim by David Attenborough and the production crew of Netflix’s ‘Our Planet’ that the walruses they showed falling to their deaths were victims of global warming. After unbelievable media attention since then, newly-revealed details only solidify my assertion. Something stinks, and it’s not just the bad acting of director Sophie Lanfear in the ‘Behind the Scenes‘ trailer as she delivers her WWF-approved message: “This is the sad reality of climate change”.
Despite many statements to the press, the film crew have steadfastly refused to reveal precisely where and when they filmed the walrus deaths shown in this film in relation to the walrus deaths initiated by polar bears reported by The Siberian Times in the fall of 2017.
I can only conclude, therefore, that the two incidents are indeed essentially one and the same: that the filmmakers, probably alerted by resident WWF employees at Ryrkaipiy, moved in after polar bears caused hundreds of walrus to fall to their deaths. The crew then captured on film the last few falls over the cliff as the walrus herd moved away from the haulout.
The lie being told by Attenborough and the film crew is that 200-300 walruses fell during the time they were filming, while in fact they filmed only a few: polar bears were responsible for the majority of the carcasses shown on the beach below the cliff. This is, of course, in addition to the bigger lie that lack of sea ice is to blame for walrus herds being onshore in the first place.
See my point-by-point analysis below and make up your own mind.
UPDATE 21 April 2019: I had an opportunity last night to watch the original Netflix walrus episode and have some addition thoughts that I’ve added below. [see separate post here]
Comments Off on ‘Our Planet’ film crew is still lying about walrus cliff deaths: here’s how we know
Posted in Polar bear attacks, walrus
Tagged Attenborough, Cape Kozhevnikov, Chukotka, cliff, climate change, deaths, fall, global warming, haulout, heartbreaking, herd, Lanfear, McPherson, Netflix, Our Planet, polar bear, Ryrkaipiy, sea ice, walrus, WWF
This year’s baseless media frenzy over walrus survival and loss of summer sea ice blamed on human-caused global warming was initiated by a press release from US Fish and Wildlife last week (16 August 2017, pdf here: “Pacific walruses haul out near Point Lay earlier than in previous years“). Quote below, my bold:
In the first week of August, several hundred Pacific walruses were observed on a barrier island near the Native Village of Point Lay, a small, Iñupiaq community on the northwest coast of Alaska. This is the earliest date yet for the haulout to form…This year, sea ice has retreated beyond the continental shelf earlier than in previous years
But is this all true? In a word, no — and it didn’t take much research to uncover the truth.
UPDATE 24 August 2017: A few minutes after this post was published, I became aware that just yesterday, 20 conservation activist organizations, lead by the Center for Biological Diversity (who led the polar bear listing charge) issued a press release regarding a letter (pdf here) pressuring the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list Pacific walrus as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Apparently, a decision must be made by the end of September on whether to actively list walrus or not. The text below has been amended to reflect this development.
Continue reading
Comments Off on Pacific walrus haulout two weeks early, US gov’t agency blames “earliest” ice loss
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Summary, walrus
Tagged Alaska, Chukchi Sea, climate change, earliest, endangered, ESA, fact check, facts, global warming, haulout, hype, Point Lay, sea ice, summary, US Fish and Wildlife Service, video, walrus
Walrus researchers from the US Geological Survey have a new report on the history of walrus haulouts in the Chukchi and Bering Seas – yet their media efforts (via press release and interviews) fail to mention the relationship between fluctuating size of walrus haulouts and fluctuating walrus population size that is evident in that history. In fact, overall population size is not mentioned at all.
Two articles came out over the weekend that announced the results of this new joint US-Russian initiative [PBS, Walrus beaching in Alaska might not be as harmful as it looks. Here’s why – 31 July 2016 and ADN, Alaska and Russia join forces to create 160-year database of walrus haulouts – 31 July 2016]
But neither articles nor the new USGS paper they are touting (Fischback et al. 2016) mention the huge summer/fall haulouts of females, calves, and juveniles that were documented in the 1970s that coincided with the huge population size at that time, which crashed in the 1980s.
Only now has the population grown (to at least 200,000) to the point that huge haulouts are again being reported – conservation has done it’s job. But when walrus numbers get too high the animals out-strip their food source and numbers plummet, as they did in the 1980s (Fay et al. 1989; Garlich-Miller et al. 2011). See my fully referenced summary paper, Crockford 2014 (On The Beach: Walrus Haulouts are Nothing New).
Here’s the concern: When (not if) a population crash happens again, will it be blamed on global warming rather than natural causes? According to the PBS article:
“The database is supposed to help federal officials with conservation, especially as more ships start sailing through the newly open waters. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is determining whether walrus should be listed as a threatened species.” [my bold]
My GWPF video on the issue (The Walrus Fuss) below:
See excerpts from the USGS database below, with a map:
Comments Off on USGS report on history of walrus haulouts leaves out correlation with population size
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat, walrus
Tagged Alaska, beaching, Bering Sea, change, Chukchi Sea, facts, Fischbach, global warming, GWPF, haul out, haulout, history, Point Lay, population size, report, St. Lawrence Island, threatened, USGS, video, walrus, Walrus Fuss
So, I guess they didn’t all die because of lack of sea ice in the Chukchi Sea. I said back on 28 August, just after the some unauthorized photos were publicized, that this haulout looked just as large as last year’s, if not larger (walruses are occasional prey of polar bears).
Now confirmed by an official US Fish and Wildlife Service estimate of 35,000 – not 36,000 mind you, or 34,000 – it was definitely 35,000. Odd, that. And surprisingly, they didn’t bother going out to count them until the day President Obama came to town. Would FWS have even bothered to get a count if there hadn’t been something newsworthy to tie it to?
Even more strange is the fact that this year, there was no accompanying hype. There were no links in any of the stories to FWS or USGS propaganda website pages, like there were last year (nor even a link to a press release). No mention of the FWS plan to have walruses declared ‘threatened with extinction‘ because of global warming. And no mention of prosecution of the photographer who took the photos on 23 August, from the required distance, but without a permit. Note the permit number stamped on the official NOAA photo provided below (taken 2 September 2015), which few outlets carried, probably because it looks nothing like a photo of walruses on a beach:
It appears that this year 35,000 walruses on a beach is a non-story. Go figure. Excerpts from the one, widely-circulated story below, from three days ago. See previous post for more walrus background, map, and video.
Continue reading
Comments Off on Pacific walrus herd hauled out in Alaska during August was as large as last year’s
Posted in Life History, walrus
Tagged Alaska, Chukchi Sea, haul out, haulout, hype, Point Lay, prey, sea ice, threatened, walrus
A new day, a new lawsuit by environmentalists: this time, the species-on-a-pedestal is the same population of Chukchi Sea walrus that generated a news frenzy last month, which apparently still has legs.
Comments Off on No proof walrus are “struggling from the loss of sea ice” as new Earthjustice lawsuit claims
Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Sea ice habitat, walrus
Tagged Arctic drilling, Center for Biological Diversity, Chukchi Sea, Earthjustice, Greenpeace, haulout, lawsuit, Natural Resources Defense Council, oil exploration, Point Lay, polar bear prey, Sierra Club, US Fish and Wildlife Service, USGS, walrus
You must be logged in to post a comment.