Polar Bear Potpourri

 Recently, the Nunavut government sponsored an aerial survey of the Hudson Bay polar population in which they concluded that:

“[T]he bear population is not in crisis as people believed,” said Drikus Gissing, Nunavut’s director of wildlife management. “There is no doom and gloom.”


Mr. Gissing added that the government isn’t dismissing concerns about climate change, but he said Nunavut wants to base bear-management practices on current information “and not predictions about what might happen.”


This was hailed in all the usual quarters as definitive prove that the global warming alarmists etc. etc.  Now two of Canada's most prominent researchers on the topic have shot back, essentially accusing the Nunavut government of engaging in "science by press conference" in order to get their bear-hunt quota bumped up:

"The Nunavut aerial survey estimated the population to be between 717 and 1,430. This aerial survey-based estimate is not significantly different from the 2004 estimate of 934 bears we did, which was based on more reliable mark-recapture studies in Manitoba."

[...]

Progress in polar bear conservation can only occur if everyone works together, using information from all possible sources, scientific and traditional, says Stirling."Making such inaccurate, incomplete, and misleading statements in a news release, ahead of the completion of a final report that is based on all the information available, is harmful to the collaboration required for successful polar bear conservation and reflects poorly on Canada in the international arena."

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Margaret Wente wrote a column on the topic.  I was just going to assume it was crap, but the gal at Media Culpa decided to go ahead and prove it.

Charles Monnett And The Polar Bears

Back in 2006, US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Enforcement and Regulation biologist Charles Monnett published a brief paper in which he described a number of drowned polar bears spotted during an aerial marine-mammals survey. This observation was the first of its kind: nobody had ever seen floating corpses of Ursus maritimus before, apparently.

Although scientists had already concluded that polar bears would have difficulty in an ice-free arctic, and might be more prone to drowning as they attempted to access the disappearing ice-platforms they needed for hunting, Dr. Monnett's observations added a nice little exclamation point to this conclusion. 

Since about February of this year, however, Mr. Monnett has been the subject of an "integrity inquiry" by the U.S. government, and the deniosphere has gone wild with the notion that this inquiry might be related to the '06 paper, and might therefore cast doubt on that paper.  Well, as was previously implied here, it is not and does not.  More precisely:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska: The US government suspended an Arctic biologist over how he awarded a polar bear research project to the University of Alberta and its management, not for his earlier scientific work detailing drowned polar bears, a watchdog group said Monday.

Now, as some have noted previously, this whole investigation has the stench of a witch-hunt about it: the Bureau hands out drilling permits, after all, and Dr. Monnett's paper did not make them happy.  Furthermore, the transcript of Mr. Monnett's original interrogation contains page after page of questions related to his work on polar bears and, frankly, the investigators come off as barely numerate and aggressively stupid.  Monnett's notes and computer were seized afterwards, and it is fair to suggest that new grounds were found for his suspension from these sources after the old grounds did not pan out.

Bjørn Lomborg To Lose State Funding?

Conservative Party climate spokesman Per Ørum Jørgensen said the government should consider if it was paying for Lomborg to go to Greenland and tell people there that it was fine not to support a climate agreement at the conference in Copenhagen.

Jørgensen was referring to Lomborg’s trip to Greenland in August when he praised the country’s stance that if a climate deal did not allow developing nations to advance industrially it would not support it.

Lomborg has been providing the Denialist community with pseudo-science talking points for years now. My favorite is probably here, where he claims that things will work out fine for the polar bear if it only learns to to evolve backwards.

Its Tough All Over For Polar Bears

One objection climate change skeptics raise in regards to the attention paid the Polar Bear--for example, attempts to have them designated an endangered species-- is that, for many sub-populations, there is too little data available to determine the status of the animal. For example:

2) the Chukchi/Bering Sea population (CB, shared with Russia, half in US territory) is tentatively estimated at 2,000 ─ no population survey has yet been done (Aars et al. 2006).

Well, perhaps there has been no survery, but it seems the Chukchi population is indeed threatened:

Polar bears are dying out in the remote Arctic region of Chukotka because of melting ice and increased killing by humans, an expert with the International Fund for Animal Welfare warned on Friday.

The guy doing the warning here is Nikita Ovsyanikov, whose spent a couple of decades studying the bears around Wrangle Island, off the Coast of Russia. Here are a few of his articles on the subject.

Concrete Consequences

"There are some concrete consequences of the [U.S. decision to classify Polar Bears as threatened], not related to climate or the sea-ice change. Animal rights campaigners cheered the ruling because it will eliminate a loophole that has allowed wealthy American trophy hunters to fly to Canada, shoot a polar bear, and come home with the head and hide."

Not surprising, I suppose, that those who will shoulder the real burden of the U.S. decision will be Canadian Inuit. While actually shooting the bears will remain legal, the fact that American hunters can no longer return home with a souvenir will likely squelch the allure of the hunt. Since acting as guides to U.S. trophy hunters provides much needed cash to Northern communities, it will be these communities that suffer as a result.

(Not that I oppose this part of the U.S. decision. I'm just saying...)

On the other hand:

...the long-delayed decision to list the bear as a threatened species may prove less of an impediment to oil and gas industries along the Alaskan coast than many environmentalists had hoped. [Interior Secretary Dirk] Kempthorne also made it clear that it would be “wholly inappropriate” to use the listing as a tool to reduce greenhouse gases, as environmentalists had intended to do.

I don't know how effective Mr. Kempthorne's strategy will be. Author Charles Wohlforth thinks it is doomed:

That leaves Kempthorne saying no single carbon emission threatens any specific bear, so there is no need for the listing to affect any carbon emissions. By this reasoning, no one should vote, or try to solve any problem unless it can be solved all at once. The next phase of the story will be the legal strategy to overturn this second line of defense established by the administration. On the face of it, it looks like the main wall has been breached and they’re hiding behind some tipped-up card tables.

There's lots of interesting further discussion through the first link above, which leads to N.Y. Times reporter Andy Revkin's Dot Earth Blog.

Polar Bears Now Considered Threatened By U.S. Government

On the eve of a court deadline, the U.S. Interior Department is adding the polar bear to the list threatened species.

Sometimes, if you're a Canadian worried about environmental issues, its best to lie down next to the U.S. elephant and hope it rolls over.

Next up, the Americans green the tar sands for us.

Although Canada hasn't been entirely delinquent with respect to the polar bears...

Forget Polar Bears! What About The Noble Fox Snake?

Word came in yesterday that the COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada) has decided that the Polar Bear is not "endangered", instead recommending that it be dubbed a "Species of Special Concern", which is a lower form of protected status:

The Polar Bear was one of the most challenging species ever assessed by COSEWIC" said Dr. Jeff Hutchings, Chair. Extensive inventory, research, a wealth of Aboriginal traditional and community knowledge and the emerging threats posed by climate change and northern development were considered. In some areas, the bear appears to be increasing; in others it is declining. The reduction of sea ice, a consequence of increasing temperatures, is a threat to the species, especially in the southern part of its range. Future stresses on the population mean that harvest will have to be managed particularly carefully in coming years.

So I zipped over to the COSEWIC website and read up and tried to decide what my opinion was.

And my opinion, until someone smarter tells me different, is that this is a not bad Canadian compromise. While less than 100% protection, if you read the relevant parts of the legislation you will see that the new status requires the Environment Minister to produce a management plan and, more importantly in my view, he

...may adopt a multi-species or an ecosystem approach when preparing the management plan if he or she considers it appropriate to do so.

As the Polar Bear is protected, so too are the species needed to sustain it; it may become significantly more difficult to drill, log, hunt, or etc. within the polar bear's established habitat.

Now, there are a number of possible flies in the ointment.

1) The government does not have to accept the committee's recommendation. John Baird has three months to decide, and so far he has made happy sounding mumbling noises.

1) If the government accepts the recommendation, the Environment Minister has a whole 5 years to produce his plan. You would think that John Baird et al would want to move swiftly on an issue like this, to establish a few environmental creds, but with this government who knows?

2) As much as I like to think I am aboriginal friendly, the only innocent party in this debate is the Polar Bear. While on the one hand Inuit spokespeople have bitched about global warming, sometimes citing the fact that their people are seeing more polar bears as the poor starving dears move inland in search of food, on the other hand they have referenced the fact that more people are seeing polar bears etc. in support of the contention that the polar bear population is in great shape and the status quo is fine re hunting levels. Their whole traditional knowledge schtick--"Breeding levels are healthy. We can sense it on the wind."--is growing a bit stale when it comes to this particular issue.

But while we are on the subject of endangered species, I would be amiss if I didn't point out the obvious fact that people gravitate towards protecting animals considered "cute" or "majestic"--usually large mammels. However, there are all sorts of endangered snakes, bugs and birds also dealt with in COSEWIC's latest release, and nobody is paying any attention to them.

So, I personally would like to put in a word for The Eastern Fox Snake

Ranging from 3 to 6 feet in length, The Eastern Fox Snake is very quiet, and won't eat you, like a polar bear. It probably won't fetch to your morning newspaper, either, but that is no reason to deny it protection.

Finally, in all matters environmental, remember my motto: Animals are Innocent, and People are Assholes.