Tag Archives: Polar Bears International

Polar bear behaviour gets the animal tragedy porn treatment – two new papers

Posted on June 12, 2015 | Comments Off

Recently, several polar bear biologists have teamed up with photographers to get pictures of starving bears into the scientific literature – and picked up by the media, with mixed results.

For the second time in five years, polar bear biologist Ian Stirling has teamed up with a photographer to give unwarranted scientific credence to an anecdotal account of polar bear behaviour. It included a picture of a pitifully thin animal (classic animal tragedy porn) and was framed to increase alarm over predicted effects of global warming. It got little media attention.

His Norwegian colleagues Jon Aars and Magnus Andersen have just done the same with a bear caught eating a white-beaked dolphin (photo above) – but this time the media took the bait.

Update 13 June 2015 – Information added on white-beaked dolphin distribution, sea ice conditions in 2014 and a correction. See below.
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Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Aars, AMO, Andersen, aquatic stalk, Arctic, Barents Sea, bearded seal, behavior, behaviour, caching, dive, evolution, global warming, Lagenorhynchus albirostris, polar bear, Polar Bears International, polarbearscience, sea ice, starving, Stirling, Svalbard, swim, thin, thin ice, tragedy porn, trapped, underwater, White-beaked dolphin

My new Arctic Fallacy paper- Sea ice stability and the polar bear

Posted on June 8, 2015 | Comments Off

I have a new paper out that explains a fundamental problem with polar bear conservation.

I’m convinced that a flawed and out-dated ecological concept — that sea ice, under natural conditions, provides a stable, predictable habitat — is what has allowed the present doom and gloom attitude of most polar bear specialists to develop.

Sea ice changes, of course, from season to season. However, the concept that sea ice is a stable habitat assumes that these seasonal changes are predictable and virtually the same from one year to the next – at least, similar enough that the differences are not responsible for causing marked declines in population size.

The assumption is that under natural, stable conditions populations of Arctic animals will either stay the same over time or increase. Biologists were taught at university that sea ice should be a stable habitat and as a result, they’ve glossed over evidence they collected to the contrary. [see recent posts here and here, for example]

Negative effects on populations of short-term natural variations in spring sea ice or spring snow cover on sea ice have been entirely ignored in modeled predictions of future conditions. The focus has been on summer ice extent.

I have summarized this evidence in a fully referenced, peer-reviewed essay that explores how the acceptance of this fallacy (“sea ice is a stable habitat”) has so skewed the conservation biology of polar bears that to outsiders it may look like a scientific integrity issue.

The summary and the essay are below (with embedded links and references). The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has published the essay in their “Briefing Paper” series (#16, The Arctic Fallacy: Sea Ice Stability and the Polar Bear), which includes a must-read foreword by Dr. Matthew Cronin, Professor of Animal Genetics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Press release here, pdf here.

I think you’ll find it timely and thought-provoking.

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Posted in Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Beaufort Sea, climate change, Cronin, ecology, global warming, GWPF, habitat, Hudson Bay, IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, K-selection, model, PBSG, polar bear, Polar Bears International, polarbearscience, population size, predictions, ringed seal, sea ice, snow depth, stable, summer, thick spring ice, variability

Hudson Bay breakup date for 2015 will really depend on which definition you use

Posted on June 5, 2015 | Comments Off

Is breakup imminent for Hudson Bay sea ice? Probably not, but this year more than ever, it will depend on how you define it. Despite a large patch of open water in western Hudson Bay (CIS chart above, for 1 June), there is still more than 70% sea ice coverage over the entire bay as of this week, when you use the standard breakup definition of 50% ice coverage (Fig. 1). Ice remaining over the bay is mostly 90% or greater, as the chart above shows – which means there is still a lot of polar bear hunting habitat remaining.

Figure 1. Sea ice coverage over Hudson Bay, as a percentage, for the week of 4 June, 1971-2015. Click to enlarge.

The interconnected region of Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, and southern Davis Strait (Fig. 2), what the Canadian Ice Service calls “Regional Hudson Bay,” is only slightly below average for the week of 4 June.

Figure 2. Regional Hudson Bay, week of 4 June. Click to enlarge.

Since ice concentration is factored into breakup date calculation, a record-early breakup is simply not possible, since the previous record date (2 June, for 1990) has already passed. It might be an earlier than average breakup year but not very early, based on the 50% coverage definition (Fig. 3, below). This year, because of the unusual pattern of breakup of Hudson Bay ice, it will be critical for polar bears which definition of breakup is used – the old, 50% method (adopted because it’s what sea ice professionals used) or the newest one, which was determined to be most relevant to WHB polar bears (Cherry et al. 2013).

UPDATE 6 June 2015: I’ve added the forecast for ice conditions over the summer for North America (which for these folks includes June because it’s aimed at temperate NA, polar bear folks call June the end of spring), provided by the Canadian Ice Service: “Seasonal outlook for North American Arctic Waters issued by the North American Ice Service on 2 June 2015” [points of potential interest marked] The sea ice forecast (Table 1) for southwestern Hudson Bay (where most western and southern Hudson Bay polar bears come ashore) is for complete ice melt by 1 Aug, eight days later than the earliest date over the period 1968-2013. Time will tell if that’s what happens.
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Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat

Tagged breakup, Cherry, Churchill, climate change, Derocher, global warming, Lunn, Polar Bears International, polarbearscience, sea ice, western hudson bay

Global polar bear population size is about 26,000 (20,000-32,000), despite PBSG waffling

Posted on May 31, 2015 | Comments Off

The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group admits its global population estimate is simply a qualified guess with a large potential error. So perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that for the purpose of comparing polar bears to other species of concern, the upper limit for polar bear numbers worldwide could be more than 30,000?

See previous posts on this global population size issue (here and here); updated information below, including the most recent IUCN PBSG statement.

UPDATE 1 September 2015: here is an updated graph of polar bear population numbers that undo the “subtractions” of the PBSG between 2001 & 2013, giving a final global estimate of about 26,000. Click to enlarge:

UPDATE 25 November 2015: The 2015 update of the IUCN Red List for polar bears essentially concurs with my assessment about polar bear numbers. They estimate the current global population is 20,000-31,000 (average of 25,500, see below, without considering the number of bears in the Arctic Basin, so not far off my assessment) but say the trend in the population is “Unknown.”

Crockford OFFICIAL polar bear numbers to 2015_IUCN concurrs Nov 18

UPDATE 23 February 2017: A new population estimate update is available based on three new survey counts that add about 2,000 bears to the average total, bringing it to almost 30,000 (28,500). Details here.

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Posted in Conservation Status, Population

Tagged Amur tiger, endangered, IUCN, PBSG, polar bear, Polar Bears International, polarbearscience, population estimate, science, Siberian tiger, snow leopard, threatened, white rhino

Head of IPCC resigns in disgrace – says protection of species is “my religion”

Posted on February 24, 2015 | Comments Off

Rajendra Pachauri, who led the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002, resigned today. He faces possible arrest on accusations of sexual assault, stalking, and harassment of several female employees.

You might be as appalled as I was to read the statement above, quoted from Pachauri’s resignation letter — which has nothing to do with the allegations and everything to do with his attitude to science and thus his leadership of the IPCC.

Journalist Donna Laframboise could not have said it better than I regarding Pachauri’s statement:

“Yes, the IPCC – which we’re told to take seriously because it is a scientific body producing scientific reports – has, in fact, been led by an environmentalist on a mission. By someone for whom protecting the planet is a religious calling.

Even here, at the end, Pachauri fails to grasp that science and religion don’t belong in the same sentence; that those on a political mission are unlikely to be upholders of rigorous scientific practice.” [emphasis in original]

The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group and conservation organizations like Polar Bears International routinely tout the IPCC as the highest arbiter of science on issues of present and future climate. For 13 long years this man has been their leader.

Add this to “The Politics of Polar Bears.”

Read the rest of Donna’s commentary here, and the Pachauri resignation letter here.

UPDATE 1 (24 Feb 2015): Amazingly, the press release issued by the IPCC makes no mention of why Pachauri has resigned: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/P41_acting_chair.pdf

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Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat

Tagged activist organizations, Donna Laframboise, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, Pachauri, polar bears, Polar Bears International, politics, Rajendra Pachauri, science and religion

Polar bear biologists doing mark-recapture work in Hudson Bay may have misled the world

Posted on November 2, 2014 | Comments Off

What exactly are Western Hudson Bay (WHB) polar bear researchers hiding? Since 2004, research on the body condition and cub production of Western Hudson Bay (WHB) polar bears has been carried out but none of the results of these mark-recapture studies have been made public.

The researchers all claim that WHB polar bears are struggling to survive because of recent sea ice changes but won’t release the 10 years worth of updated information they possess on the bears or the sea ice.

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Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Population, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Amstrup, body condition, climate change, cub mortality, Derocher, global warming, invasive research, litter size, Lunn, mark-recapture, misinformation, photo ops, polar bear, polar bear survival, polar bear week, Polar Bears International, population estimate, propaganda, vital rates, western hudson bay

W Hudson Bay polar bear population no longer “declining” – where are the headlines?

Posted on October 29, 2014 | Comments Off

Why are the #saveourseaice folks at Polar Bears International, who have being working in Western Hudson Bay for decades, not dancing in the streets of Churchill? Environment Canada’s Polar Bear Technical Committee upgraded the status of Western Hudson Bay polar bears from “declining” to “likely stable” four months ago (details here). Why has this fabulous news not made major headlines around the world?

Figure 4. Environment Canada's "Map 3: 2014 Canadian Polar Bear Subpopulation and Status Map," original here.

Figure 1. Environment Canada’s “Map 3: 2014 Canadian Polar Bear Subpopulation and Status Map,” original here. Western Hudson Bay is “WH.”

After years of being told by polar bear specialists and activists organizations like Polar Bears International and the World Wildlife Fund that the Western Hudson Bay (WHB) population is already suffering mightily because of global warming, it now appears that is far from the truth.

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Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status

Tagged #saveourseaice, activists, Amstrup, Assiniboine Park Zoo, Churchill, declining population, declining sea ice, Environment Canada, misinformation, polar bear, Polar Bears International, politics of polar bears, status, western hudson bay, WHB, WWF

Ian Stirling now says the polar bear that “died of climate change” last year was “in his prime”

Posted on September 18, 2014 | Comments Off

With Barents Sea ice way above average this summer, Polar Bear Specialist Group biologist Ian Stirling now claims the old polar bear that he said died of climate change last year on Svalbard was “in his prime” and still blames the bear’s death on lack of sea ice — despite all evidence to the contrary.

UPDATE Sept. 19, 2014 typo fixed in Fig. 1 caption [sea ice low for 2012 was 3.41 m2km, not 4.1, see here.]

Figure 1. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says the September minimum for 2014 is “imminent” and suggests the low may come in at 5.1 million square kilometers (far short of the ~~4.1~~ 3.41 m2km low reached in 2012. About the much larger than average amount of ice around Svalbard and Franz Josef Land, they said only: “As was the case for the beginning of the month, extent remains below average in all sectors of the Arctic except for a region in the Barents Sea, east of Svalbard.”

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Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged AMO, annual summer minimum, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, Barents Sea, Franz Josef Land, Hopen Island, minimum ice extent, Mult, NSIDC, polar bear that died of climate change, Polar Bears International, sea ice extent, starving polar bear, Stirling, Svalbard

Polar Bears International responds to “The Politics of Polar Bears”

Posted on September 4, 2014 | Comments Off

Well, sort of — what they did was provide a logical fallacy reply to an almost incoherent comment by a PBI Facebook supporter who had watched the documentary and complained of bias (such a predictable response).

See what you think, screen-cap below (taken September 3, 2014 at about 2PM Pacific Time.
[UPDATE added September 4, 2014 at 8:30PM Pacific, see below]

Comments Off on Polar Bears International responds to “The Politics of Polar Bears”

Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Derocher, documentary, endangered, Environment Canada, Facebook, IPCC, IUCN, logical fallacy, man behind the curtain, Polar Bear Specialist Group, polar bears, Polar Bears International, politics of polar bears, sport hunting, threatened, trophy bears