CANADA/CHASSE À L'OURS POLAIRE

[Animal 0]

21 DÉCEMBRE 2005-

Ice cold bear killers



Sick ... a hunter poses for pictures with blasted bear




By EMILY SMITH
US Editor

HUNDREDS of endangered polar bears are being slaughtered by bloodthirsty hunters — paying £15,000 a time.

Wealthy gunmen shoot the bears in Canada and bring home their bodies as gruesome trophies.

After the kills, they proudly pose next to the giant blood-soaked animals for sick photos.



Trophy ... American killer grabs slaughtered bear around neck



Rick Herscher, 60, who runs the hunting trips, boasts: “Polar bears are the ultimate kill. They are the largest carnivore on the planet and the highest status of all trophy species.

“We track them down with dogs and sleighs. Once we’ve found one, they are pretty easy to kill because on the ice they have nowhere to hide.”

He callously adds: “Killing a polar bear is the pinnacle of a man’s hunting career. Those who haven’t done it dream about it.”

The bears weigh up to 1,750lbs and can be 8ft 6in tall.



Skinned ... couple pose with bear pelt on ice



The Sun last week told how the Worldwide Fund for Nature has warned they could become extinct within 30 years. Global warming is shrinking their ice habitat.

But Herscher says: “Bears in Alaska and Canada are like rats — everywhere.

“Most people think polar bears are cute — but they can destroy boats, rip up houses and easily kill a man.”

The hunt chief, who has killed hundreds of bears, sends groups of up to 12 rich Americans to Canada each season, from October 1 to April 30.



Melting away ... our story last week



They are given permits by Canadian authorities — even though the bears are an endangered species.

Herscher, boss of Florida-based Alaska Hunting Safaris, says more than 300 are killed each year.

Canada has an estimated population of 15,000 bears — but protection group Polar Bears International predicts the world’s population of 25,000 bears will drop a third within 50 years.


http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005580545,00.html

[Animal 0]

Polar bears at risk



Large carnivores are sensitive indicators of ecosystem health. Polar bears are studied to gain an understanding of what is happening throughout the Arctic. A polar bear at risk is often a sign of something wrong somewhere in the arctic marine ecosystem.
The area covered by arctic sea ice is melting at an unprecedented rate. Polar bears need sea ice to access their food, and to move from hunting grounds to their denning or summer resting areas.
Toxic chemicals transported to the Arctic from the south have long-term effects on polar bear health and longevity.
Oil exploration in the Arctic affects polar bears by fragmenting and disturbing their habitat, and by introducing oil and other toxic substances to their environment.
Although much of the traditional harvesting in local communities is sustainable, the main threat to polar bears in some areas is still over-hunting.
Download the report (PDF - 374 KB)

http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/where_we_work/arctic/polar_bear/threats/index.cfm
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The Sunday Times December 18, 2005

Polar bears drown as ice shelf melts
Will Iredale



SCIENTISTS have for the first time found evidence that polar bears are drowning because climate change is melting the Arctic ice shelf.
The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart.


Although polar bears are strong swimmers, they are adapted for swimming close to the shore. Their sea journeys leave them them vulnerable to exhaustion, hypothermia or being swamped by waves.

According to the new research, four bear carcases were found floating in one month in a single patch of sea off the north coast of Alaska, where average summer temperatures have increased by 2-3C degrees since 1950s.

The scientists believe such drownings are becoming widespread across the Arctic, an inevitable consequence of the doubling in the past 20 years of the proportion of polar bears having to swim in open seas.

“Mortalities due to offshore swimming may be a relatively important and unaccounted source of natural mortality given the energetic demands placed on individual bears engaged in long-distance swimming,” says the research led by Dr Charles Monnett, marine ecologist at the American government’s Minerals Management Service. “Drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice continues.”

The research, presented to a conference on marine mammals in San Diego, California, last week, comes amid evidence of a decline in numbers of the 22,000 polar bears that live in about 20 sites across the Arctic circle.

In Hudson Bay, Canada, the site of the most southerly polar bears, a study by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Canadian Wildlife Service to be published next year will show the population fell 22% from 1,194 in 1987 to 935 last year.

New evidence from field researchers working for the World Wildlife Fund in Yakutia, on the northeast coast of Russia, has also shown the region’s first evidence of cannibalism among bears competing for food supplies.

Polar bears live on ice all year round and use it as a platform from which to hunt food and rear their young. They hunt near the edge, where the ice is thinnest, catching seals when they make holes in the ice to breath. They typically eat one seal every four or five days and a single bear can consume 100lb of blubber at one sitting.

As the ice pack retreats north in the summer between June and October, the bears must travel between ice floes to continue hunting in areas such as the shallow water of the continental shelf off the Alaskan coast — one of the most food-rich areas in the Arctic.

However, last summer the ice cap receded about 200 miles further north than the average of two decades ago, forcing the bears to undertake far longer voyages between floes.

“We know short swims up to 15 miles are no problem, and we know that one or two may have swum up to 100 miles. But that is the extent of their ability, and if they are trying to make such a long swim and they encounter rough seas they could get into trouble,” said Steven Amstrup, a research wildlife biologist with the USGS.

The new study, carried out in part of the Beaufort Sea, shows that between 1986 and 2005 just 4% of the bears spotted off the north coast of Alaska were swimming in open waters. Not a single drowning had been documented in the area.

However, last September, when the ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of Alaska, 51 bears were spotted, of which 20% were seen in the open sea, swimming as far as 60 miles off shore.

The researchers returned to the vicinity a few days later after a fierce storm and found four dead bears floating in the water. “We estimate that of the order of 40 bears may have been swimming and that many of those probably drowned as a result of rough seas caused by high winds,” said the report.

In their search for food, polar bears are also having to roam further south, rummaging in the dustbins of Canadian homes. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer who has been to the North Pole seven times, said he had noticed a deterioration in the bears’ ice habitat since his first expedition in 1975.

“Each year there was more water than the time before,” he said. “We used amphibious sledges for the first time in 1986.”

His last expedition was in 2002, when he fell through the ice and lost some of his fingers to frostbite.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1938132,00.html

[Animal 0]

Polar bears treading on thin ice

Climate change blamed for decline in population along Hudson Bay coast
By MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT

Saturday, December 24, 2005 Page A3

ENVIRONMENT REPORTER

TORONTO -- The population of polar bears along the western coast of Hudson
Bay plunged by 22 per cent from 1987 to 2004, and if the trend continues,
the big mammals will likely become extinct in the area within a few decades,
says Ian Stirling, an Environment Canada research scientist.

During the 17-year period, bear numbers dropped to fewer than 950 from
1,200, and climate change that is literally putting the animals on thin ice
is being blamed.

Global warming is causing an earlier summer melt of the ice on which polar
bears hunt for ringed seals, their preferred prey, making it difficult for
the bears to lay on enough fat to survive in their harsh environment.

"If the forecasts are correct and if the climate continues to warm as it has
for the last 30, 40, 50 years, then I don't think there are going to be any
polar bears in Hudson Bay in 25 to 40 years," he said.

Mr. Stirling, one of the world's foremost experts on polar bears, presented
the population finding last week at a U.S. conference on marine mammals.

He and three other U.S. and Canadian researchers have prepared a scientific
paper on the decline that is expected to be published next year.

The bears around Hudson Bay are the world's southernmost population of these
large carnivorous mammals, and if global warming is having an adverse
effect, scientists believe it would likely show up first in this region.

The reduced food supply has led to something akin to a famine, cutting the
survival chances of cubs, young bears between three and four years old, and
the old, according to Mr. Stirling.

Adult bears are not being affected and appear to be able to cope with the
adversity, which is similar to what happens to humans during periods of
widespread starvation, when most adults survive but children and the old die
in greater numbers.

"This is quite normal in mammal populations, that if times get tough, it's
the young and the old that suffer most," Mr. Stirling said.

The population count covered the coast of Hudson Bay from Rankin Inlet in
the north to the Ontario-Manitoba boundary in the south. It includes the
famed population around Churchill, Man., an international tourist attraction
that has caused the community to be dubbed the world's polar bear capital.

Ontario has a separate bear population along Hudson Bay and James Bay that
had an estimated 1,000 members in the mid-1980s. It is not yet known whether
this group is declining, but the bears are also suffering from
malnourishment.

Martyn Obbard, a research scientist with the Ministry of Natural Resources,
says sampling over the past three years has found that the bears weigh an
average of 15 per cent less than ones caught in the region during the
mid-1980s. There has been "a significant decline in body condition in the
last 20 years," he said.

The ministry is investigating several theories for the weight loss,
including a drop in seal numbers and poor ice conditions. The province is
working on a new population estimate, and Mr. Obbard hopes it will be
completed by early in the spring.

The bears of Hudson Bay move onto the ice when it forms each year in late
November, and remain there hunting until it melts in the summer.

After breakup, the bears return to land and live off stored fat for a
minimum of four months while awaiting the return of winter.

Sea ice on Hudson Bay is breaking up about three weeks earlier than it did
about 30 years ago, Mr. Stirling said.

This earlier melting is a disaster for the bears because it is occurring at
the time they traditionally put on large amounts of fat from the hunting of
newly weaned ringed seal pups.

The seals are easy to hunt at this point because they are not yet totally
wary of predators, allowing the bears to gain weight rapidly in preparation
for their four-month fast.

The population decline is a major development, and suggests that a recent
decision by Nunavut to approve a larger hunting program for polar bears
might be ill-advised.

Earlier this year, it expanded the hunt to 55 animals from 47.

Manitoba doesn't allow hunting of polar bears because they are too valuable
for the tourist industry.

Mr. Stirling says many northerners think more bears are around than before
because more of them are being seen close to hunting lodges and communities.

But he says the bears are so hungry they're being forced to scavenge for
food around humans. That's why there are more sightings, even though the
population is falling.

Wildlife researchers have records on polar bear numbers in western Hudson
Bay going back to the late 1970s. Mr. Stirling says this lengthy record
makes scientists confident the population is undergoing a long-term decline,
not just a short-term cyclical blip.

[Animal 0]

Tuesday, January 10, 2006


Bear populations are on thin ice


Reports this week claimed that polar bears were being forced by climate change into cannibalism and attempting suicidal swims. Experts say it is too early to be sure, but these are the kind of impacts expected as melting sea ice leaves the bears with longer distances to travel.

At the 16th biennial conference on the biology of sea mammals in San Diego, California, last week, marine biologists from the US Minerals Management Service reported finding four bears drowned off the northern coast of Alaska last autumn. They also spotted an unusually large number of bears swimming in the open sea, some as far as 95 kilometers offshore. Twenty percent of bears seen in the area in September were in the water, while records from previous years show that 4 percent of sighted bears were swimming.

Tonje Folkestad, climate-change officer at the World Wildlife Fund’s Arctic program in Oslo, Norway, agrees that bears are at risk from melting ice, but says it’s too early to conclude that more are drowning because of climate change.

“We can’t say at the moment that there is a trend for polar bears to drown,” she says. “But we do expect to see more of this kind of event in the future.” Spending more time in the open sea increases bears’ exposure to the risks of the effect of cold, exhaustion or rough seas. “Common sense tells you that if they have to swim 60 miles instead of 20, drowning is more likely,” adds Folkestad.

Going, going, gone

Folkestad says the trend of melting Arctic ice, which is the main habitat for polar bears, presents real problems for the species. The ice sheet is shrinking at a rate of about 10 percent a decade, with Arctic summer temperatures climbing to around 2 degrees Celsius higher than they were 50 years ago. About 1.3 million square kilometers, an area equivalent to three times that of California, have been lost over the past four years.

The new report is not hard proof of clear links between melting ice and negative effects on polar bears. But as anecdotal evidence accumulates, conservationists and scientists are becoming concerned. Researchers funded by the WWF in Yakutia, northeastern Russia, have seen an unusually high number of bears in the area this year, as well as recording a record low for sea ice.

Conservation rangers in Yakutia saw two incidents of one bear killing another, with some media reports claiming that starving bears were practicing “cannibalism.”

“These observations are not rare or extraordinary in themselves,” says Folkestad, “what was unusual was the lack of sea ice in the area.”

Conservation specialists are convinced that action is necessary to find out more about how melting ice is affecting bears, in anticipation of serious problems to come.

Special status

In June 2005 the world conservation union polar bear specialist group decided polar bears should have their conservation status upgraded from “least concern” to “vulnerable.” The panel, made up of the world’s leading polar bear experts, did so because they expect a 30-percent decline within the next 35 to 50 years, due to loss of their ice habitat.

Most populations seem steady, but a study to be published next year by the US Geological Survey and Canadian Wildlife Service will show a serious decline in the population of polar bears in Hudson Bay, Canada. The number of bears has fallen by 22 percent since 1987, dropping to 935 animals in 2005.

“That’s a worrying sign,” says Folkestad, “this is the most southerly population of bears where there is the least ice anyway, so we might expect this to happen elsewhere as melting progresses.” She says more research needs to be done on how polar bears are being affected by shrinking ice.

On December 15 three conservation groups launched a bid to use the courts to force the US government to protect polar bears. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace are suing the US government for failing to act on a petition sent to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in February. It asked that polar bears be designated as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. If the case is successful, the necessary steps to list polar bears as threatened could take up to two years.
--Tom Simonite, Nature

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2006/jan/10/yehey/life/20060110lif8.html

[Animal 0]

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article337581.ece
10 January 2006 08:57 Environment
Toxic waste creates hermaphrodite Arctic polar bears
By David Usborne in New York
Published: 10 January 2006

Toxic waste creates hermaphrodite Arctic polar bears Wildlife researchers
have found new evidence that Arctic polar bears, already gravely threatened
by the melting of their habitat because of global warming, are being
poisoned by chemical compounds commonly used in Europe and North America to
reduce the flammability of household furnishings like sofas, clothing and
carpets.

A team of scientists from Canada, Alaska, Denmark and Norway is sounding the
alarm about the flame retardants, known as polybrominated diphenyls, or
PBDEs, saying that significant deposits have recently been found in the
fatty tissues of polar bears, especially in eastern Greenland and Norway's
Svalbard islands.

Studies are still being carried out on what impact the chemicals might be
having on the bears, but tests on laboratory animals such as mice indicate
that their effects can be considerable, attacking the sex and thyroid
glands, motor skills and brain function.

There is also evidence that compounds similar to the PBDEs have contributed
to a surprisingly high rate of hermaphroditism in polar bears. About one in
50 female bears on Svalbard has both male and female sex organs, a
phenomenon scientists link directly to the effects of pollution.

"The Arctic is now a chemical sink," declared Colin Butfield, a campaign
leader for the Worldwide Fund for Nature, which last month indicated that
killer whales in the Arctic were also suffering from elevated levels of
contamination with fire retardants as well as other man-made compounds.
"Chemicals from products that we use in our homes every day are
contaminating Arctic wildlife."

The pollutants are carried northwards from industrialised regions of the US
and western Europe on currents and particularly on northbound winds.
Contaminated moisture often condenses on arriving in the cold Arctic climes
and is then deposited, ready to enter the food chain.

For several years, scientists have observed how the concentrations of the
pollutants are magnified as they ascend the food chain, from plankton to
fish and then to marine mammals such as seals, whales and polar bears. The
new study, first published last month in the journal Environmental Science
and Technology, shows, for instance, that one compound was 71 times more
concentrated in polar bears than in the seals they normally feed upon.

Conservationists are especially alarmed by these new findings because of the
already fragile condition of the Arctic polar bear populations, some of
which could be devastated before the end of the century. As warming
temperatures erode their hunting grounds, polar bears in Canada's western
Hudson Bay region, for instance, saw their numbers slide from 1,100 in 1995
to only 950 in 2004.

The dangers now posed by the PBDEs are reminiscent of the crisis 30 years
ago over PCBs - polychlorinated biphenyls - a highly toxic by-product of
many industries that was also found to be migrating to the Arctic. The
dumping of PCBs was swiftly banned. Since 2004, manufacturing has stopped in
the US of two of the most toxic retardants, called penta and octa.
Stockpiles of both still exist, however.

According to Derek Muir, of Canada's Environmental Department and a leader
of the new research, there are signs of a slightly different retardant,
typically used in construction materials and furnishings, also showing up in
the Arctic and in the bears, called HBCD. "It's a chemical that needs to be
watched, because it does biomagnify in the aquatic food webs and appears to
be a widespread pollutant."

The research team tested 139 bears captured in 10 different locations across
the Arctic region. They found that the bears in Norway's Svalbard, a
wildlife refuge where all hunting is banned, had 10 times the levels of the
chemicals than bears in Alaska and four times those in Canada.

Toxic waste creates hermaphrodite Arctic polar bears
Wildlife researchers have found new evidence that Arctic polar bears,
already gravely threatened by the melting of their habitat because of global
warming, are being poisoned by chemical compounds commonly used in Europe
and North America to reduce the flammability of household furnishings like
sofas, clothing and carpets.

A team of scientists from Canada, Alaska, Denmark and Norway is sounding the
alarm about the flame retardants, known as polybrominated diphenyls, or
PBDEs, saying that significant deposits have recently been found in the
fatty tissues of polar bears, especially in eastern Greenland and Norway's
Svalbard islands.

Studies are still being carried out on what impact the chemicals might be
having on the bears, but tests on laboratory animals such as mice indicate
that their effects can be considerable, attacking the sex and thyroid
glands, motor skills and brain function.

There is also evidence that compounds similar to the PBDEs have contributed
to a surprisingly high rate of hermaphroditism in polar bears. About one in
50 female bears on Svalbard has both male and female sex organs, a
phenomenon scientists link directly to the effects of pollution.

"The Arctic is now a chemical sink," declared Colin Butfield, a campaign
leader for the Worldwide Fund for Nature, which last month indicated that
killer whales in the Arctic were also suffering from elevated levels of
contamination with fire retardants as well as other man-made compounds.
"Chemicals from products that we use in our homes every day are
contaminating Arctic wildlife."

The pollutants are carried northwards from industrialised regions of the US
and western Europe on currents and particularly on northbound winds.
Contaminated moisture often condenses on arriving in the cold Arctic climes
and is then deposited, ready to enter the food chain.

For several years, scientists have observed how the concentrations of the
pollutants are magnified as they ascend the food chain, from plankton to
fish and then to marine mammals such as seals, whales and polar bears. The
new study, first published last month in the journal Environmental Science
and Technology, shows, for instance, that one compound was 71 times more
concentrated in polar bears than in the seals they normally feed upon.

Conservationists are especially alarmed by these new findings because of the
already fragile condition of the Arctic polar bear populations, some of
which could be devastated before the end of the century. As warming
temperatures erode their hunting grounds, polar bears in Canada's western
Hudson Bay region, for instance, saw their numbers slide from 1,100 in 1995
to only 950 in 2004.

The dangers now posed by the PBDEs are reminiscent of the crisis 30 years
ago over PCBs - polychlorinated biphenyls - a highly toxic by-product of
many industries that was also found to be migrating to the Arctic. The
dumping of PCBs was swiftly banned. Since 2004, manufacturing has stopped in
the US of two of the most toxic retardants, called penta and octa.
Stockpiles of both still exist, however.

According to Derek Muir, of Canada's Environmental Department and a leader
of the new research, there are signs of a slightly different retardant,
typically used in construction materials and furnishings, also showing up in
the Arctic and in the bears, called HBCD. "It's a chemical that needs to be
watched, because it does biomagnify in the aquatic food webs and appears to
be a widespread pollutant."

The research team tested 139 bears captured in 10 different locations across
the Arctic region. They found that the bears in Norway's Svalbard, a
wildlife refuge where all hunting is banned, had 10 times the levels of the
chemicals than bears in Alaska and four times those in Canada.

[Animal 0]

Polar bears carry chemicals


Randy Boswell, CanWest News Service

Published: Monday, January 09, 2006

A new Canadian-led study shows the beleaguered polar bear - already the poster species for animals at risk from climate change - has also become a prime repository for a globe-trotting chemical widely used in the 1990s to prevent car seats, couches and computers from bursting into flames.

Project leader Derek Muir, a senior researcher with Environment Canada, says the startling accumulation in polar bear fat of PBDEs - a family of once-popular flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers - is proof of the ongoing vulnerability of Arctic wildlife to the long-range transport of persistent toxic substances through the air and water.

The study, to be published this month in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, also revealed that as king of the Arctic food chain, the polar bear contained much higher concentrations of PBDEs than its principal prey, the ringed seal - a disturbing sign of the "biomagnification" of the compound in the far North ecosystem.

The main U.S.-based manufacturer of PBDEs has already withdrawn the product from the market and most countries, including Canada, have banned the chemical, or are moving to halt its use. But the 12-member research team, including scientists from Norway, Denmark and the U.S., has predicted the toxin will remain in the global environment for years and will probably persist longest in the Arctic because the colder climate slows its decomposition.

The scientists tested 139 male and female bears captured at six sites across the Canadian Arctic as well as in Alaska, Greenland and Norway. They found while bears throughout the circumpolar region had absorbed significant amounts of PBDEs, those in Greenland and Norway had the highest concentrations of the chemical - probably because of the way winds carry contaminants from the most industrialized parts of North America and western Europe.

Researchers suspect elevated levels of PBDEs could affect bears’ reproductive and immune systems, brain functions and bone strength.

Muir, who is based at the National Water Research Institute in Burlington, Ont., said the threat posed by PDBEs, which have also been shown to accumulate in human tissue, results from "our rush to introduce safety measures" in consumer products with scant attention to what happens to chemicals during their manufacture, use and disposal.

"In general, we haven’t considered their long-range transport potential," he told CanWest News Service Monday. "Now, we’re dealing with a legacy of these chemicals in the environment."

Muir said scientists have noted "a lot of parallels to PCBs" in the way traces of PBDEs are carried north on air currents and accumulate in the fatty tissues of polar bears and other marine mammals. PCBs, once used to insulate electrical transformers, helped give rise to the ecology movement in the 1970s when the contaminant was found to be travelling around the world and persisting at potentially dangerous levels throughout the environment.

Muir said researchers believe that once all sources of PBDEs are eliminated, the chemical is likely to disappear from the environment more rapidly than PCBs have. But, he added, a chemical now being used as an alternative to PBDEs, the flame retardant known as HBCD, also appeared in some of the polar bears sampled in the study.

"This may yet be an ongoing problem," he said.

CanWest News Service

http://www.canada.com/windsorstar