Tag Archives: status table

Dodgy new clarification of global polar bear population estimate (yes, another)

Posted on August 5, 2014 | Comments Off on Dodgy new clarification of global polar bear population estimate (yes, another)

In an attempt to get themselves out of a mess of their own making, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) has just dug their hole even deeper.

pbsg logo

Although the minutes of their 2014 June meeting (pdf here) contained this statement…

“K. Laidre summarized the need for the PBSG to do a better job of communicating accurate and balanced science about polar bears.” Pg. 28

…you might conclude, after reading the rest of this post, that polar bear specialists don’t really understand what these terms mean.

Due to the flack they have been catching over their global polar bear population estimates, the PBSG determined that another clarification was in order. [As opposed to the first clarification, a footnote the group planned to insert in an upcoming report, which PBSG chairman Dag Vongraven sent to me in May)]

The new clarification, apparently co-authored by Steve Amstrup and Andy Derocher (PBSG 17 minutes, pg. 33 – copied below), makes an astonishingly bold claim that I can easily show is untrue.

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2013 PBSG polar bear status table information in one document

Posted on February 23, 2014 | Comments Off on 2013 PBSG polar bear status table information in one document

As I pointed out on Valentine’s Day, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) has released a revised population estimate for polar bears of 18,349 (range 13,071-24,238), based on a new status table posted February 14, 2014.

PBSG status-table-2013_Feb 14 2014_intro

In that February 14th post, I also pointed out that as for the 2005 and 2009/2010 status tables, the PBSG did not add up the columns and give the totals — you had to do that yourself, which is how I got the numbers above (last week, I made a couple of graphs that show changes over time in their status table estimates). Oddly enough, there is now no mention of an official global polar bear estimate anywhere on the PBSG website.

In addition — and the point of this post — is that to see the details of how and why the PBSG biologists arrived at the population estimates and the status assessments they present (with references), you have to click on the hyperlinked title of each separate subpopulation in the table. While they made a one-page black and white summary of the online colour table available as a pdf (linked at the bottom of the page), they did not make the assessment details from the status table available in pdf format.

So I did it myself, via copy/paste into a Word document that I converted to a searchable pdf, without editorial comment except that I included the totals given above and noted a few glaringly obvious omissions (see below). It took me all of 30 minutes.

I offer it here for more effective scrutiny, convenient reference and archival purposes — because the way it stands now, the online table could disappear tomorrow without any hard-copy evidence of the information hyperlinked within it.

UPDATE February 26, 2014 I checked the PBSG website this morning and the omissions I noted below that were present a few days ago have been fixed. I did not receive a reply to my email notification of the issue. An updated pdf is now available.

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Polar Bear Specialist Group population status update – officially postponed

Posted on February 3, 2014 | Comments Off on Polar Bear Specialist Group population status update – officially postponed

I kept a close watch on the website of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) over the weekend to see if an actual population status update might eventually appear (see my last post).

Nothing all weekend, but today (Monday, February 3), the “Population status – Status table” tab (where the 2010 status table was inserted on Friday), returned an error message — the out-of-date status table put up on the day an updated one was promised was simply gone.

However, I noticed that the last sentence of the original December 16, 2013 “Population status reviews“ announcement had been changed, without any indication that it had been amended.

From December 16, 2013 until February 2, 2014 that last sentence said:

“The new status table and assessments will be published as they are available in web format no later than February 1, 2014.”

Now it reads:

“The new status table and assessments will be published as they are available in web format in February, 2014.” [my bold]

The date stamp on this page is February 3, 2014, see screen cap below.

What do you call this — “Bayesian transparency”? I think it means a polar bear population status update may be forthcoming…sometime.

PBSG Population status reviews_Feb 3 2014 notice

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Polar Bear Specialist Group population status update is much ado about nothing

Posted on February 1, 2014 | Comments Off on Polar Bear Specialist Group population status update is much ado about nothing

I cannot for the life of me fathom why the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) bothered to insert an announcement on their website back in mid-December, promising an updated polar bear status assessment, since the posted January 31 “update” is nothing of the sort — there have been no changes of any consequence.

It therefore appears I interpreted the oddly worded announcement incorrectly and none of the anticipated changes were forthcoming. Baffling, to say the least. Have a look at the new updated documents that were posted yesterday and see what you think.

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Misleading “State of the Polar Bear” graphic still not fixed

Posted on April 1, 2013 | Comments Off on Misleading “State of the Polar Bear” graphic still not fixed

UPDATE FEBRUARY 19, 2014 – The misleading “State of the Polar Bear” graphic is now GONE (as of January 31, 2014). A new 2013 status table is offered by the PBSG here. It has detailed text explanations and harvest information, with references, hyperlinked to each subpopulation entry (“Press the subpopulation hyperlink and more information will appear“) and may have replaced the “State of the Polar Bear” graphic that the PBSG commissioned for upwards of US$50,000, although the PBSG website says it is being “updated” [A pdf copy of the 2013 colour table is here, and my commentary on it is here.] I have left the original post as is, below.

This is an update regarding the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG)’s fancy, multilevel State of the Polar Bear web graphic that I discussed previously here, here, and here.

To refresh your memory, two points about this graphic stand out, both regarding polar bear population estimates:

1) The population estimates listed on the Nations map (copied below) add up to 22,600-32,000 – far higher than the official estimate of 20,000-25,000 polar bears worldwide.

2) The population estimates listed on the upper layer of the Subpopulation map add up to just 13,036 – not even close to the official estimate of 20,000-25,000 polar bears worldwide.
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