WSJ, Jan 3 (behind subscriber wall);
“We are concerned,” said Mr. Kempthorne, that “the polar bears’ habitat may literally be melting” due to warmer Arctic temperatures. However, when we called Interior spokesman Hugh Vickery for some elaboration, he was a lot less categorical, even a tad defensive. The “endangered” designation is based less on the actual number of bears in Alaska than on “projections into the future,” Mr. Vickery said, adding that these “projection models” are “tricky business.”
Apparently so, because there are in fact more polar bears in the world now than there were 40 years ago, as the nearby chart shows. The main threat to polar bears in recent decades has been from hunting, with estimates as low as 5,000 to 10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. But thanks to conservation efforts, and some cross-border cooperation among the U.S., Canada and Russia, the best estimate today is that the polar bear population is 20,000 to 25,000.
It also turns out that most of the alarm over the polar bear’s future stems from a single, peer-reviewed study, which found that the bear population had declined by some 250, or 25%, in Western Hudson Bay in the last decade. But the polar bear’s range is far more extensive than Hudson Bay. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain concluded that the ice bear populations “may now be near historic highs.” One of the leading experts on the polar bear, Mitchell Taylor, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory in Canada, has found that the Canadian polar bear population has actually increased by 25% — to 15,000 from 12,000 over the past decade.
Mr. Taylor tells us that in many parts of Canada, “polar bears are very abundant and productive. In some areas, they are overly abundant. I understand that people not living in the North generally have difficulty grasping the concept of too many polar bears, but those who live here have a pretty good grasp of what that is like.” Those cuddly white bears are the Earth’s largest land carnivores.
There is no doubt that higher temperatures threaten polar bear habitat by melting sea ice. Mr. Kempthorne also says he had little choice because the threshold for triggering a study under the Endangered Species Act is low. The Bush Administration was sued by the usual environmental suspects to make this decision, which means that Interior will now conduct a year-long review before any formal listing decision is made.
Nonetheless, the bears seem to have survived despite many other severe warming and cooling periods over the last few thousands of years. Polar bears are also protected from poaching and environmental damage by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, so there is little extra advantage to the bears themselves from an “endangered” classification.
All of which suggests that the real story here is a human one, namely about the politics of global warming. Once a plant or animal is listed under the Endangered Species Act, the government must also come up with an elaborate plan to protect its habitat. If the polar bear is endangered by warmer temperatures, then the environmentalist demand will be that the government do something to address that climate change. Faster than you can say Al Gore, this would lead to lawsuits and cries in Congress demanding federal mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The rest of the article has been copied here.
Hmmm … could it be that decline in Hudson Bay was due to hunting pressure from the aboriginals?
Mmmm… could be willy.
I’ve heard tell that polar bear tastes a lot like bald eagle.
In Farley Mowat’s Sea Of Slaughter (published 1984), the old fibber makes the astonishing claim that the polar bear should rightfully be called the “white bear” because it roamed the southern parts of Canada too, until of course the white devil arrived.
So the polar bear “decline” has been doing on for some time now. :~)
all because of that favourite demon, “whitey”
Polar bear tastes like bald eagle?Ye gawd man,do yourself a favour and try some real bush meat like spotted owl.A little difficult to come by down here in the Province of Toronto but well worth the effort once you get past the 7 1/2 pickles.
“most of the alarm over the polar bear’s future stems from a single, peer-reviewed study, which found that the bear population had declined by some 250, or 25%, in Western Hudson Bay in the last decade”
Maybe the polar bears that hang around Churchill are getting ‘fed’ up with all those tourists disrupting their lonely lifestyle and are moving to more ’empty of humans’ environs.
http://www.john-daly.com/p-bears/index.htm
http://www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/publications/bears511.htm
“Bear populations at greatest risk include Asiatic black bear populations in Baluchistan, Taiwan, and many areas of Southeast Asia; many small isolated sloth bear populations throughout their range; sun bear populations throughout their range; brown bear populations in Mongolia Tibet, France, Spain, and Italy; all giant panda populations; and the spectacled bear populations in Venezuela, Columbia, and the desert populations in Peru.”
Gee how come no mention at all of polar bears?
“polar bears are very abundant and productive”
The Canadian Polar Bear Marketing Board will fix that. Head Office in Winnipeg.
Film at 11.
Wait till the Polar Bears have to wait over a year for their food.
The reason polar bears declined around hudson bay….human meat has high cholesterol, bears died from heart disease
Re: TorontoRedStar a.k.a. pravda-on-da-don. Weds 10jan07 Editorial Cartoon.
The Missing first part of the cartoon headline should read “…After years of bungling by the absolutely ineffective Liberals and Steve Dion…”
steve Dion is a laughable buffoon. So is the rest of his all-talk/no-action crowd of clowns and charlatans.
What happened to the polar bears when the entire North American Continent was a tropical paradise with dinosaurs roaming around? How did they survive?
Can anyone out there help with this?
Don’t you know Mike that those “Whitey” Polar Bears discriminated against the traditional animals. They committed an act of genocide on the ancient inhabitants of this continent. That is why, on behalf of all the disinfranchised and displaced criters and persons the traditional people of the Continent demand compensation!
“I understand that people not living in the North generally have difficulty grasping the concept of too many polar bears”
In the same way that Toronto Disney cartoon lovers cancelled the spring bear hunt here in Ontario, and now people in Kapiskasing, Timmins , Smooth Rock Falls have to drive their kids home after school, to avoid black bears that come into the town every day?
Yeah but German TOURISTS like to see them in Churchill!
Mike H.: “What happened to the polar bears when the entire North American Continent was a tropical paradise with dinosaurs roaming around? How did they survive?”
Um, huh? Mammals hadn’t hardly begun their diversification and evolution until the dinosaurs were gone. There certainly wasn’t anything like a bear.
Cheers,
lance
true lance.
at the time of the dinosaur the closest living mammal to a bear was something like a shrew. mammals were egg eating nuisances to the big dinosaurs – which are not reptiles. Birds are likely surviving dinosaur kin. A few things happen in 65000000 years.
Hate to spoil you afternoon lance and cal2 but bears have been around fer a long time. check out this site: news(dot)nationalgeographic(dot)com/news/2004/11/1111_041111_brown_bears.html
As the last ice age was ending 18,000 or so years ago, there were plenty of mammals around including the hairy elephant and them sabertooth kittys.
Umm…err….I was just joking about the Bear and the Dino thing. Of course they were not living together. No one is really advocating that on this thread are they?
Raptors and bears, oh my!
To Big Bear Attack: CPBMB, Wish I’d said that. Beatiful.
if warm temperatures are a problem for the bears ,why couldn’t we give them attractive clips like poodles? It could give them a great edge in swimming too!
Does anyone know the name of the peer reviewed journal acticle mentioned in the third paragraph?
Thanks
tedf: “…spotted owl”
This is supposed to be much better:
http://tinyurl.com/zda3y