Governments Agree on Polar Bears

credit: NBC, Svalbard male starved  

Update: The latest news on the struggle of polar bears to survive in a rapidly warming Arctic is not good. A new study says the population of southern Beaufort Sea bears has declined a terrifying 40%. Published in Ecological Applications, journal of the Ecological Society of America, the study authors conclude that within a decade (2001-2010) the number of bears has been reduced from 1500 to 900. This population is at the edge of polar bear range, so it is clear that warming is taking a heavy toll on the ice dependent bear according to a Canadian wildlife official. Subadults are being particularly hard hit says the study by lack of sea ice and low prey abundance. Unless immediate steps are taken to relieve the polar bear from other source of mortality, Earth's largest terrestrial predator is headed for extinction (14.05.11, A Refuge for Ice Bears).

{11.11.14}The Convention on Migratory Species meeting that just ended in Quito, Ecuador approved greater protections for polar bears (Ursus maritimus) who are facing extinction due to a radically warming Arctic. Appendix II listing means that signatory countries must put conservation plans in place, but does not prohibit killing bears as an Appendix I listing would require. Dr. Masha Vorontsova, head of IFAW Russia said the listing is a recognition by 120 countries that polar bears are endangered by climate change, hunting and pollution. US Person thinks the listing is an important first step but more action is needed if the polar bear is to be saved from extinction. The meeting also decided to prohibit the capture of live whales and dolphins for use as human entertainment.

Canada's refusal to offer full protection to polar bear has come under scrutiny of the Commission for Environmental Co-operation, a body set up under the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA). Research predicts that two thirds of polar bears will be lost by 2050 due to Arctic sea ice melting. The Commission doubts sufficient consideration was given to research. In 2007 the USGS said several polar bear populations in Canada would disappear entirely. The US decared polar bears endangered in 2008. Canada, which has an active polar bear hunting trade, listed the bears as only a species of special concern in 2011 under its endangered species law. The Commission's secretariat called for an investigation of Canada's enforcement of the Species at Risk Act based on the best available science and has given the country 60 days to respond. Canada is subject to increasing international criticism for its government's resource exploitation policies. The Center for Global Development ranked Canada last amoung the world's 27 richest countries for its environmental record. Canada dropped out of the Kyoto protocol and the conservative government accused of intimidating goverrnment scientists who speak out on environmental issues.

The polar bear population on the western shore of Hudson Bay has shrunk by nearly 10% to 850 bears in under a decade. A sharper drop in the survival rate of cubs puts the entire population in danger of collapse in a few years. Government population studies as yet unreleased to the public are grim. Polar bears of western Hudson Bay have little chance of long-term survival. Hudson Bay's ice free season has expanded by about a day or the past thirty years. Last year it was 143 days long. Scientists think that when it reaches 160 days, polar bears will starve to death because they cannot hunt seal in the spring. As a result of this slow starvation, females are 88 lbs lighter than they were in the early 1980s and they are having fewer, lighter cubs that causes fewer to survive.