Polar Bears

[Skull Pilot]

We keep hearing about polar bears in relation to climate change.

I have a simple question.

If the Polar sea ice was gone, what do you think would happen exactly to polar bears?

Here is my answer to the question.

They would migrate to the land where they would thrive.

Simple reasoning should tell us that if the sea ice was gone that the seals the bears hunt would not have ice floes to use as rafts and they would have to migrate to land to survive. The bears would follow and the hunting would resume.

In fact, I would suggest that polar bears would do better if their prey had to migrate to the land as it is much more difficult for a bear to catch a seal when it has an escape to the water.

 

[code1211]

We keep hearing about polar bears in relation to climate change.

I have a simple question.

If the Polar sea ice was gone, what do you think would happen exactly to polar bears?

Here is my answer to the question.

They would migrate to the land where they would thrive.

Simple reasoning should tell us that if the sea ice was gone that the seals the bears hunt would not have ice floes to use as rafts and they would have to migrate to land to survive. The bears would follow and the hunting would resume.

In fact, I would suggest that polar bears would do better if their prey had to migrate to the land as it is much more difficult for a bear to catch a seal when it has an escape to the water.

The jury's out on Polar Bears.

The overall population has increased since the 60's. That's when they were classed as endangered and hunting was limited. The population went up for most of the Polar Bear groups to a level about 5 times the 1960's level and now is coming down for some.

Of course, the villain in this is Global Warming. Hitch your wagon to the cause d'jour and someone will fill it with money.

When deer hunting was limited where I grew up, deers were starving due to too many and ever increasing deers trying to eat a stable and not increasing food supply. The deers who were being "saved" by the actions of the well intentioned but poorly informed were dropping dead in the front yards of city dwellers as they searched for food. The deers were searching for food, not the city dwellers.

Anyway, with the recovery of Arctic Sea ice, the problem for the Polar Bears should be cooling. Literally. However, it's possible that there might be too many bears for the food supply. This could be possible with or without ice.

The group most shrunken is also the group most closely studied and the group in the area that is most heavily fished. Western Hudson Bay. If the fishermen are taking all the fish, I wonder if the bears are having trouble finding and eating what's left. The "activities of Man" in this case might be the actual fishing and not particularly running the CO2 producing diesel engines on the boats.

Maybe if we made the fishermen swim instead of riding around in boats...

 

[waltky]

Arctic sea ice melt causin' Polar bear numbers to decline one-third...

Polar bear numbers seen declining a third from Arctic sea ice melt
Mon Dec 12, 2016 | Rising temperatures that melt sea ice in the Arctic will probably reduce the polar bear population by a third over the next few decades, and the same warming trend is likely to worsen the decline of wild reindeer, scientists said on Monday.

The new findings by university and government researchers were presented as part of a panel discussion about climate impacts on wildlife during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The presentation was streamed live on the internet. The polar bear research is drawn from new satellite data documenting a loss of Arctic sea ice - the animal's chief habitat - from 1979 to 2015, and forming the basis of projections in further declines of both ice and bears over the coming decades. Polar bears currently number about 26,000, but their population is expected to diminish by some 8,600 animals over the next 35 to 40 years, the scientists said. At the time polar bears were declared a threatened species in 2008, one study predicted they could vanish from two-thirds of their native range by mid-century.

A polar bear sow and two cubs are seen on the Beaufort Sea coast within the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Image Library​

The latest data better quantifies such an outcome. "There is the potential for a large reduction in the global population of polar bears over the next three generations if the sea ice loss continues at the rate we've seen it," said Kristin Laidre, a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Washington's Polar Science Center. Polar bears, standing as tall as 11 feet (3.35 meters) and weighing up to 1,400 pounds (635 kg), use floating sea ice as platforms for everything from mating and rearing their young to hunting their preferred prey of ringed seals. The study was led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Eric Regehr, who told Reuters habitat loss was unequivocal but that effects have varied among the world's 19 sub-populations of polar bears, whose range lies mainly within the Arctic Circle. He pointed to a region north of Alaska where the number has dropped sharply amid significant sea ice losses.

Another population west of Alaska appears to have experienced less impact, but that area may sustain larger, healthier populations of seals and other polar bear prey, Regehr said. A warmer climate also is thought to be a primary culprit in the rapid decline of wild reindeer and their close cousins, caribou, Andrey Petrov, head of the Arctic Center at the University of Northern Iowa, said at Monday's symposium. Petrov's study of wild reindeer in Taimyr in northern Russia shows that herd's population has fallen to about 600,000 animals, from 1 million in 2000. The Taimyr population, accounting for about 24 percent of all wild reindeer, is challenged by such factors as loss of young because of migration patterns hampered by a warming climate.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-climate-arctic-idUSKBN14205I[/quote][/CENTER]

 

[IanC]

Arctic sea ice melt causin' Polar bear numbers to decline one-third...

Polar bear numbers seen declining a third from Arctic sea ice melt
Mon Dec 12, 2016 | Rising temperatures that melt sea ice in the Arctic will probably reduce the polar bear population by a third over the next few decades, and the same warming trend is likely to worsen the decline of wild reindeer, scientists said on Monday.

The new findings by university and government researchers were presented as part of a panel discussion about climate impacts on wildlife during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The presentation was streamed live on the internet. The polar bear research is drawn from new satellite data documenting a loss of Arctic sea ice - the animal's chief habitat - from 1979 to 2015, and forming the basis of projections in further declines of both ice and bears over the coming decades. Polar bears currently number about 26,000, but their population is expected to diminish by some 8,600 animals over the next 35 to 40 years, the scientists said. At the time polar bears were declared a threatened species in 2008, one study predicted they could vanish from two-thirds of their native range by mid-century.

A polar bear sow and two cubs are seen on the Beaufort Sea coast within the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Image Library​

The latest data better quantifies such an outcome. "There is the potential for a large reduction in the global population of polar bears over the next three generations if the sea ice loss continues at the rate we've seen it," said Kristin Laidre, a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Washington's Polar Science Center. Polar bears, standing as tall as 11 feet (3.35 meters) and weighing up to 1,400 pounds (635 kg), use floating sea ice as platforms for everything from mating and rearing their young to hunting their preferred prey of ringed seals. The study was led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Eric Regehr, who told Reuters habitat loss was unequivocal but that effects have varied among the world's 19 sub-populations of polar bears, whose range lies mainly within the Arctic Circle. He pointed to a region north of Alaska where the number has dropped sharply amid significant sea ice losses.

Another population west of Alaska appears to have experienced less impact, but that area may sustain larger, healthier populations of seals and other polar bear prey, Regehr said. A warmer climate also is thought to be a primary culprit in the rapid decline of wild reindeer and their close cousins, caribou, Andrey Petrov, head of the Arctic Center at the University of Northern Iowa, said at Monday's symposium. Petrov's study of wild reindeer in Taimyr in northern Russia shows that herd's population has fallen to about 600,000 animals, from 1 million in 2000. The Taimyr population, accounting for about 24 percent of all wild reindeer, is challenged by such factors as loss of young because of migration patterns hampered by a warming climate.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-environment-climate-arctic-idUSKBN14205I[/quote][/CENTER]

hahahahahaha. I thought they already predicted polar bears would decrease. then they didnt.

one or two years ago a polar bear with a collar was recorded swimming for over a month in an area that was 'ice free'. is it more likely that she swam continuously for 5 weeks, or that the area wasnt ice free?

 

[Crick]

Ian:

1) Are you contending that the Arctic ice extents have not been decreasing?
2) Are you contending that polar bears (and walrus and harp, spotted and ringed seal) are not critically dependent on ice?