On Monday, a federal judge struck down a Bush administration rule that prohibited regulation of greenhouse gases under the Endangered Species Act to save polar bears from extinction. That provision has, since 2008, been the biggest hurdle to using all possible means to address the most pressing threat polar bears have ever faced: global warming.
Now that the rule has been tossed out, Obama can -- and should -- tackle this dire threat. The North's great white bears don't have time for more delays and half-measures.
Year by year, the Earth's warming temperatures are robbing polar bears of the Arctic sea ice they need to survive -- the ice where they find their food and raise their young. But last month, scientists at the University of Bremen said that the extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic reached a historic low, retreating by some 50 percent since 1972.
The ice loss has been devastating for polar bears. Scientific literature is now rife with reports of starvation, cannibalism, drowning, more conflicts with people, increased mortality in both adults and cubs, and shrinking populations.
This species is being pushed inexorably toward extinction: Without help, the U.S. Geological Survey predicts that two-thirds of the world's polar bears -- including all polar bears in Alaska -- will probably be gone by 2050.
The Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC and Greenpeace petitioned for, and eventually won, federal protections for the polar bear in 2008 and more than 120 million acres of protected habitat last year. Despite those important steps, the primary threat to polar bears -- global warming, driven by greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes, smoke stacks and other human sources -- have gone largely unaddressed.
The Endangered Species Act provides important tools to reduce the diverse threats to species -- threats that range from dams that hurt salmon to pesticides that harm frogs to greenhouse gas emissions that kill polar bears. The Bush administration, determined not to regulate greenhouse emissions, issued a rule exempting those emissions from important provisions of the law, so that large polluters couldn't be compelled to reduce their emissions to protect the polar bear. The Endangered Species Act of course isn't the only, or even the leading, law to reduce greenhouse pollution, but it provides an important supplement to the Clean Air Act and other statutes. Environmental laws are designed to work together, after all, and to solve a crisis like climate change we need to use every tool in the box, not padlock the lid down.
On Monday U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan struck down the 4(d) rule, as it's called, saying it violated environmental review provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act. The judge told the Obama administration to redo the rule -- providing an important opening for polar bears to finally get the help they so badly need. While the ruling, unfortunately, does not foreclose a new exemption similar to the last, it forces the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to work through the process of determining how polar bears should be protected.
Unfortunately, there's reason to be concerned. The Obama administration has already come out with a full defense of the Bush administration rule and has refused to give polar bears the best protection possible by designating them as "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act.
Rather than give up, though, we have to demand more and fight at every turn to make sure President Obama secures a future for the polar bear -- the largest and most magnificent bear on the planet -- rather than simply write it off as a casualty of a crisis we could have controlled.
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“The total number of polar bears is still thought to be between 20,000 and 25,000,” the group said in a press release published together with a report on the proceedings of its 15th meeting
20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide is exactly the same population estimate the group made following its 14th international meeting.
“The total number of polar bears worldwide is estimated to be 20,000–25,000,” the scientists said in the report they issued after that previous meeting."
Polar bear populations are declining:
The Polar Bear Specialist Group of the IUCN determined that 8 of 19 of the world’s polar bear populations are declining, 3 are stable, 1 is increasing, and the status of 7 is unknown (Obbard et al. 2010).The Western Hudson Bay population declined by 22% between 1987 to 2004, which was attributed to earlier sea-ice breakup in spring, shortening the time that bears can hunt on the ice (Regehr et al. 2007).The Southern Beaufort Sea population appears to have declined from an estimated 1,800 bears in 1986 to 1,526 bears in 2006, which has been attributed to loss of sea ice (Obbard et al. 2010).
Polar bear survival and reproductive success are declining as sea ice disappears:
Female survival, breeding rates, and cub litter survival declined as the ice-free period increased during 2001 to 2006 in the Southern Beaufort Sea (Regehr et al. 2010).The survival of juvenile, subadult and older bears declined from 1984 to 2004 in the Western Hudson Bay, which was linked to earlier sea-ice breakup (Regehr et al. 2007). The survival of polar bears of all age classes in the Northern Beaufort Sea decreased with declines in the sea-ice concentration over shelf waters in the Northern Beaufort Sea (Stirling et al. 2011).
Declines in polar bear body size linked to nutritional stress:
Skull size and body length of polar bears three years and older declined over time between 1982 and 2006 in the Southern Beaufort Sea, which was attributed to increased nutritional stress (Rode et al. 2010). Body condition and cub production of bears in Western Hudson Bay declined between 1981 and 1998, linked to earlier sea-ice breakup and nutritional stress (Stirling et al. 1999).
Starvation and fasting:
Researchers found that two to three times as many polar bears were in a fasting state in 2005 and 2006 compared with 1985 and 1986, indicating increased nutritional stress (Cherry et al. 2009).
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/polar_bear/fact_sheet.html
Surveys during September 2004 in the Southern Beaufort Sea reported 14 of 55 polar bears (25%) in open water, of which 4 bears were drowned. Prior surveys during September 1987-2003 had observed only 4% of bears swimming in open water and none drowned (Monnett and Gleason 2006).An adult female was documented making a 687-km continuous swim over 9 days to reach the distant sea-ice edge, followed by an 1800-km walk and swim, in fall 2008 in the Beaufort Sea during which time she lost 22% of her body mass and her yearling cub (Durner et al. 2011).A survey in the Chukchi Sea in August 2008 recorded 10 polar bears swimming in open water, with one bear more than 60 miles from shore (Clarke et al. 2011). Bears in the Southern Beaufort and Chukchi Seas are being forced to swim increasingly longer distances to find stable ice or reach land, increasing mortality of their cubs (Pagano et al. 2011).
Cannibalism:
Three instances of cannibalism were documented in 2004 and one in 2006 in the Southern Beaufort Sea region, including an unprecedented incident in which a male polar bear stalked, killed, and ate a mother polar bear in her den (Amstrup et al. 2006, Stirling et al. 2008). Four incidents of adult male polar bears killing cubs for food were reported in Western Hudson Bay in 2009, which was higher than prior reports of one to two incidents per year (PBI 2009).
Desperate hunting behaviors linked to nutritional stress:
Polar bears were documented using abnormal and inefficient hunting behaviors in spring of 2004 to 2006 in which they clawed holes through solid ice to try to catch seals, suggesting high nutritional stress (Stirling et al. 2008).
Bears are being forced onto land due to sea-ice loss and must wait longer to begin hunting on the ice:
Polar bears have shifted from offshore pack ice to the coast in fall as sea ice has retreated increasingly far from shore in the Southern Beaufort Sea (Schliebe et al. 2008, Gleason and Rode 2009).Increasing numbers of polar bears have been observed on the Chukchi Sea coast in November and December in the past 10-15 years (Kochnev 2006), and bears in this region have been delayed from returning to sea-ice in fall by two to three weeks compared to the 1980s (S.E. Belikov cited in Durner et al. 2009).
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/polar_bear/fact_sheet.html
They are cold. Many believe they are mandated by, Jehovah, the ancient tribal warrior god, of the Jews to 'subdue' the earth.
They figure robbing, raping, and squandering our resources as 'subduing'
They are the ones who scream people before animals while we reach 7 billion and slowly kill off all living creatures.
The ignorance is appalling.
The victims were part of a larger group of 80 (people) that landed last month on Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, at the start of a five-week adventure. The island, which is more than 1,200 miles north of Oslo, is home to 2,000 people — and more than 3,000 polar bears.
here's a recent fact from a news article.
The Polar Bear Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the organization of scientists that has attempted to monitor the global polar bear population since the 1960s, has issued a report indicating that there was no change in the overall global polar bear population in the most recent four-year period studied.
“The total number of polar bears is still thought to be between 20,000 and 25,000,” the group said in a press release published together with a report on the proceedings of its 15th meeting
20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide is exactly the same population estimate the group made following its 14th international meeting.
The Chukchi Sea - The subpopulation thought to be declining due to reductions in sea ice and unknown rates of illegal harvests.
Southern Beaufort Sea - A recent population estimate of 1,526 bears and newly estimated birth and death rates suggests a decline in recent years. Sea-ice habitat has declined substantially.
Northern Beaufort Sea - Population thought to be stable.
Kane Basin - Harvest is thought to be unsustainable and population is declining.
Norwegian Bay - Population thought to be declining; harvest is low, but the population has lower productivity and is quite discrete.
Lancaster Sound - Population thought to be declining.
Baffin Bay - In 1998, the population size was estimated to be 2,074. A 2004 population of less than 1,600 was simulated from birth and death rates in 1998.
Davis Straight - Population likely increased over last 20 years. Empirical birth and death rates suggest population is now declining.
Gulf of Boothia - Population thought to be stable.
M'Clintock Channel - Population thought is thought to be increasing from low numbers.
Southern Hudson Bay - Population thought to be stable. Body condition of bears has declined since 1980's.
Western Hudson Bay - Population size declined to 935 in 2004 from 1,200 in the mid-1980's. Declines in population size, survival and birth rates and body condition have been linked to earlier ice break up.
http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/population-map.html
The Arctic was almost ice free during the 1930s and polar bears survived that event.
But then, these folks won't ever talk about these facts.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq.html
I don't suppose you have a reliable reference for that? And by "reliable reference" I don't mean some amateur blog post, I mean actual science from actual scientists.
I don't think we can. In the first place, the idea that human activity causes global warming is in serious doubt among serious people, no matter how shrilly the doomers deny it. If the up-until-recently warming planet is just fluctuating naturally, there's nothing we can do about it.
Second, China and India will soon pass us in GHG production (or they already have, depending on who you listen to), and neither is even considering limiting their GHG output. For any other players on the world stage to curb their GHG emissions (and nuke their economies in the process) is completely pointless.
But cheer up. Counting polar bears is difficult and inexact, and there are plenty of experts who say that they aren't in any danger at all. In fact, a lot of scientists think that their population is actually growing.
The author of this article makes a common mistake among the green crowd, that the Earth we see today is some kind of immutable object. Actually, we're living a snapshot in time. Polar bears survived the Medieval Warming Period just fine. No reason to panic, I'm thinking they'll be OK.
Who doubts warming? 98% of climate scientists agree that man-made emissions of co2 cause climate change.
Who says polar bears are no longer in danger? You are just making up nonsense.
The Medieval Warming period was regional in nature. "All in all, when the warm places are averaged out with the cool places, it becomes clear that the overall warmth was likely similar to early to mid 20th century warming. Since that early century warming, temperatures have risen well-beyond those achieved during the Medieval Warm Period across most of the Globe. This has been confirmed by the National Academy of Sciences Report on Climate Reconstructions. Further evidence (Figure 1) suggests that even in the Northern Hemisphere where the Medieval Warm Period was the most visible, temperatures are now beyond those experienced during Medieval times."
It is very nice of you, and very infantile, to replace the judgement of scientists with your your own saying that the bears will be OK.
No, he doesn't, and no one else does either. Yet another boilerplate denier strawman.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/190805/20110802/polar-bear-global-warming-extinction-climate-change-research-world-wide-fund-wwf-geological-survey-s.htm
But then their religion of Gaia doesn't allow for heresy against the 'consensus'.
At the 2009 meeting of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, scientists reported that of the 19 subpopulations* of polar bears:
8 are declining.
3 are stable.
1 is increasing.
By comparison, in 2005:
5 were declining.
5 were stable.
2 were increasing.
*Insufficient data to determine the fate of the other 7 populations
Results from long-term studies show:
Canada's Western Hudson Bay population: 22% decline since the early 1980s, directly related to earlier ice break-up on Hudson Bay.
Southern Beaufort Sea population along the northern coast of Alaska and western Canada: decline in cub survival rates and in the weight and skull size of adult males; similar observations made in Western Hudson Bay prior to its population drop.
Baffin Bay population, shared by Greenland and Canada: at risk from both significant sea ice loss and substantial over-harvesting.
Chukchi Sea population, shared by Russia and the United States: declining due to illegal harvest in Russia and one of the highest rates of sea ice loss in the Arctic.
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/will-polar-bears-survive
Wow. You guys repeat this so often that I think you actually believe it.
Does this look "flat" to you?
http://bit.ly/pS0hPf
It sure doesn't to me. And this despite the obvious cherry-picking of the biggest El Nino ever recorded as the start year. Yes, despite that it's STILL not flat.
In fact, the 1998-present trend is only a little lower than the overall warming trend since 1975:
http://bit.ly/nqBlEC
And you wonder why people use the word "deniers." No mystery there. It's the appropriate term for those who simply deny facts.