Wednesday 21 June is the longest day of the year: wear something white tomorrow to acknowledge and celebrate the success of polar bears despite such low summer sea ice since 2007 that 2/3 of them were predicted to disappear.
White tie, white shirt, white socks work too. Keep cool and signal to the world that you love outstanding survivors of climate change, fat though they may be.
Global sea ice extent at 19 June 2018, well past the end of the intensive spring feeding period for polar bears:
Comments Off on Wear white on the solstice to celebrate polar bear success in a warming world
Posted in Conservation Status, Population, Sea ice habitat
Tagged polar bear, sea ice, solstice, success, thriving
Optimism in conservation science — which the Smithsonian says we desperately need (Earth Optimism Summit 21-23 April 2017, apparently a huge success) — means it’s time to acknowledge and celebrate real conservation success stories. The Smithsonian folks probably won’t say it but I will — one of those successes is the recovery of polar bears.
It’s time to abandon the focus on prophesies of impending loss and accept that recovery of polar bears from the over-hunting of last century has continued despite a decade of low summer sea ice (Aars et al. 2017; Crockford 2017; Dyck et al. 2017; SWG 2016; York et al. 2016). Why not focus on the numerous images of fat, healthy bears rather than the anomalous starving ones?
It’s time to let go of imagined future catastrophes based on pessimistic failures of adaptation (Amstrup et al. 2007, 2008; Atwood et al. 2016; Stirling and Derocher 2012) and acknowledge that polar bears and Arctic seals, just like Pacific walrus (MacCracken et al. 2017; US Fish & Wildlife Service 2017), are resilient species with adaptive capabilities we are only just beginning to comprehend (Crawford and Quakenbush 2013; Crawford et al. 2015; Escajeda et al. 2018; Rode et al. 2014; Stirling and Lunn 1997; Stirling et al. 1975a; Vibe 1965). Continue reading
Comments Off on Science, optimism, and the resilience of polar bears in an ever-changing Arctic
Posted in Conservation Status, Summary
Tagged abundance, conservation, facts, observations, optimism, populations, save the polar bear, science, sea ice, success, walrus
I knew it was coming up and then forgot to check, but sometime about 2 weeks ago blog views here at PolarBearScience passed the one million mark — more than two months ahead of my 5th anniversary.
Over 1 million views, four polar bear books (including my first novel, the polar bear attack thriller EATEN), several white-paper type publications (here, here, and here), several magazine articles (one here), two videos (see below), and a scientific paper on polar bear conservation that was peer reviewed before it’s publication at PeerJ Preprints.
Not bad for a five year stint on a blog with a single species focus. Continue reading
Comments Off on Just when I wasn’t paying attention: 1 million views surpassed
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged books, conservation, critique, polar bear, publications, success, walrus
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