The polar bear has become the symbol of the plight of animals in the face of global warming. A new report appears to reaffirm the plight of these incredible animals. A study in the Ecological Applications journal reports that the number of polar bears in eastern Alaska and western Canada has declined by 40%. Perhaps the most unnerving disclosure is that just two of 80 polar bear cubs that the international team tracked between 2003 and 2007 have survived.
The numbers are staggering. The bear population in the area shrank to about 900 in 2010, down from about 1,600 in 2004.
Polar bears serve as a tragic type of canary in a cage for climatologists charting the progress of global warming. The news is obviously not good for them or for us.
The bears rely on ice flows and seal populations to survive. The distance at which they are required to swim has now gotten longer and more painful according to scientists. In one case, a mother had to swim nine days and 426 miles — resulting in her loss of 22% of her body weight. Her cub died.
There was a bear stabilization between 2008-2010 due to unusual oceanographic conditions and other conditions. However, experts now predict that more than two-thirds of the world’s polar bear subpopulations could be extinct by 2050.
Source: LA Times
People think Polar Bears are cute. Ever think about the seals? What about them?
You know….polar bears are actually brown bears that got trapped in the polar regions and adapted to that environment. Polar Bears can mate and breed with Brown Bears. Before they were polar bears they really wanted to be Yogi Bear with his pickinick baskets and buddy Boo Boo Bear, in Jellystone Park.
Evolution. Why do you guys want to deny it?
DBQ – I would deny evolution on the grounds that Yogi Bear and Boo Boo are cartoon characters.
http://youtu.be/aE1IfSHioq0
Trooper,
Bears are in decline everywhere it seems. Go Packers.
Sorry to break it to you professor but not everyone is a bears fan. Just sayn’
Trooperyork – if the Bears had lost this weekend we would have never seen this article.
Or my god/dog ate my homework.
Hefner (Hugh?)
Since god put us here. Therein lies our biggest weakness and perhaps our doom. We invented god and all the fables and fairy tales that go along with it. If there is a god, as some believe, didn’t it put us here to manage our garden properly. As long as humankind passes on the responsibility and blame to gods, humanity will be hard pressed to fix its messes.
Karen,
Another puzzling question. A chameleon is afraid of a smartphone. But didn’t see the bill or overage fees yet?
Groty – great link! It’s so important to look at all the data.
No matter what, I hope the polar bear persists in our lifetime. Beautiful animals. Although I seriously would not want to encounter a wild one in person.
Jerry – it took him so long, he forgot once he got there.
You know why a sloth is green? Poop. He’s growing a poop garden on his fur, which feeds algae, which he eats when he grooms himself. That gives him that little boost of energy that helps him survive.
How sad. Polar bears definitely got the short end of the stick, adapting to such harsh environments.
There is always a high cub mortality rate. If things go well, they get to starve for many months until their cubs are old enough to trek to a freezing ice flow, where they get to try to catch seals as they come up for air. The mother then has to fend off cannibalistic males, who would just as soon eat an easily caught cub than a fleet seal.
What is especially tragic is that any animal that has adapted to an extreme condition may have difficulty adapting again when those conditions change. Brown Bears became isolated as the Earth cooled, and evolved into Polar Bears. But the climate can never be “frozen”, pardon the pun. Before humankind ever evolved, the climate has always changed. We could all leave the planet, and it will, eventually, warm again, and then cool again. Why should that stop merely because people are here? So, no matter what, the polar regions will expand and contract, and those creatures best suited to survive by the skin of their teeth in such areas will be hard-pressed to adapt again. Perhaps a small measure of hope is that polar bears have been interbreeding with brown bears along the edges of their territory. Perhaps at some point, that will be the final destination of the breed, to be reabsorbed into the brown bear population from which they came.
But that will be a sad day when the last polar bear is gone from the wild, regardless of whether the cause is anthropogenic or not.
As for Carbon emissions, I personally would like to see a gaseous profile optimal for mammalian life. This hyper fixation on carbon bleeds away from efforts to combat all other pollutants. Devegetation and anything that threatens marine phytoplankton/algae, the main oxygen factories of our planet, barely get any screen time.
I’m investigating a puzzling question. Why did the tree Sloth cross the road?
If you’d like to read a reality based interpretation of the study from a Phd zoologist who has dedicated her life to studying polar bears, I strongly suggest the Polar Bear Science blog.
The glossed over part of the research is the RECOVERY of the population that may have been decimated because the ice was TOO THICK a decade ago, rather than from Global Warming®.
http://polarbearscience.com/2014/11/18/s-beaufort-polar-bears-largely-recovered-from-known-2004-2006-decline-says-new-study/
BTW, she’s also the scientist who demolished the WWF’s propaganda that was heavily promoted in the mainstream/leftist media several weeks ago about the walrus “haulouts” being caused by Global Warming®.
Whether or not animals are smarter, more adept, better able to take care of themselves than humans, they are certainly more beautiful than humans. For that reason alone, most of us want to preserve them.
First, it occurs to me that the Polar Bear takes a lower class when compared to the human being. Then, one must consider that the world as we know it is dissappearing before our eyes and we must also seek to recognize that we are all linked in the struggle to preserve the Earth. A global thought
process is needed to appreciate our (human) capacity to create unintended consequences and the loss of life on a large scale which threatens us all as inhabitants of this our small blue planet.
In one inadequate sense the loss of the Polar Bear is akin to the canary in the coal mine. This is an early warning of the dangers surrounding us. Time to wake up world.
Your observation is not necessarily a sign of global warming or for that matter anything other than polar bears are declining. Species of all types have disappeared as a natural ebb and flow of nature since God put us all here.
I know this sounds mean, but why are we concerned about saving dangerous predators?
Populations increase and decrease according to increased and decreased food supply. A one year count of a sub population is NO real indicator of what is going on. Even I learned that in high school biology. It is a fact of nature, for those of us who watched the Disney nature features, that baby animals die. Don’t worry about the loss of a baby polar bear.
Just for the sake of argument, what is the purpose of the polar bear in the great cycle of life? They are an apex predator, but other than that? What will we have more of if we have fewer polar bears? Certainly there is always a trade off. Fewer polar bears, more polar bear prey (whatever that is).
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/14-1129.1
The paper abstract:
In the southern Beaufort Sea of the U.S. and Canada, prior investigations have linked declines in summer sea ice to reduced physical condition, growth, and survival of polar bears. Combined with projections of population decline due to continued climate warming and the ensuing loss of sea ice habitat, those findings contributed to the 2008 decision to list the species as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Here, we used mark-recapture models to investigate the population dynamics of polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea from 2001 to 2010, years during which the spatial and temporal extent of summer sea ice generally declined. Low survival from 2004 through 2006 led to a 25-50% decline in abundance. We hypothesize that low survival during this period resulted from 1) unfavorable ice conditions that limited access to prey during multiple seasons; and possibly 2) low prey abundance. For reasons that are not clear, survival of adults and cubs began to improve in 2007 and abundance was comparatively stable from 2008 to 2010 with approximately 900 bears in 2010 (90% C.I. 606-1,212). However, survival of subadult bears declined throughout the entire period. Reduced spatial and temporal availability of sea ice is expected to increasingly force population dynamics of polar bears as the climate continues to warm. However, in the short term, our findings suggest that factors other than sea ice can influence survival. A refined understanding of the ecological mechanisms underlying polar bear population dynamics is necessary to improve projections of their future status and facilitate development of management strategies.
The title’s a little misleading. Polar bear counts declined by 40% in this small region (one of the smallest polar bear count areas). Overall, the worldwide population is estimated to be stable or have increased slightly (about 10%) during the same period.
No political agenda in the comment … just interested in science over sensationalism.