This interesting article shows the information and perception gap between scientists that do helicopter surveys of polar bears and the native people who co-exist in their presence.
Excerpts:
In a news release issued after its conference last July, the PBSG concluded that only one of 19 total polar bear subpopulations is currently increasing, three are stable and eight are declining. Data was insufficient to determine numbers for the remaining seven subpopulations. The group estimated that the total number of polar bears is somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000. (Estimates of the population during the 1950s and 1960s, before harvest quotas were enacted, range from 5,000 to 10,000.)
…
Not so fast. According to a U.S. Senate and Public Works Committee report, the “alarm about the future of polar bear decline is based on speculative computer model predictions many decades in the future. Those predictions are being “challenged by scientists and forecasting experts,” said the report.
Those challenges, supported by facts on the ground, including observations from Inuit hunters in the region, haven’t stopped climate fear-mongers at the U.S. Geological Survey from proclaiming that future sea ice conditions “will result in the loss of approximately two-thirds of the world’s current polar bear population by the mid 21st century.”
…
Harry Flaherty, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in the capital of Iqaluit, says the polar bear population in the region, along the Davis Strait, has doubled during the past 10 years. He questions the official figures, which are based to a large extent on helicopter surveys.
“Scientists do a quick study one to two weeks in a helicopter, and don’t see all the polar bears. We’re getting totally different stories [about the bear numbers] on a daily basis from hunters and harvesters on the ground,” he says.
…
The growing population has become “a real problem,” especially over the last 10 years, he says. During the summer and fall, families enjoying outdoor activities must be on the look-out for bears. Many locals invite along other hunters for protection.
Last year, in Pelly Bay, all the bears that were captured were caught in town, Nirlungayuk says. “You now have polar bears coming into towns, getting into cabins, breaking property and just creating havoc for people up here,” he says.
…
Flaherty and many others disagree with the official story. “We are aware there are changes in the weather, but it is not affecting the daily life of the animals,” he says. “Polar bears hunt in the floe-edge areas, on newly formed ice, and in the fiords in search of baby seals. They don’t hunt in the glaciers [areas of multi-year ice].
“We’re not seeing negative effects on the polar bear population from so-called climate change and receding ice,” he says. He is convinced that some scientists are deliberately “using the polar bear issue to scare people” about global warming, a view widely shared by many Nunavut locals.
…
Read the entire article here, it is quite enlightening
Paul in Sweden says:
December 18, 2011 at 6:43 pm
Several years ago I did quite a bit of digging and discussed this topic with several individuals. Back then I recall there were 24 distinct polar bear populations. In recent years I have notice time and time again that while the polar bears as a whole are increasing the population groupings are being reduced.
+++++++++++++
Well, that’s because like humans, polar bears are globalising their world. LOL.
Now, lets be serious, on what scientific grounds can one reach such a conclusion? DNA? And who is darting thousands of polar bears with anesthetic to get their DNA? How can one honestly declare such statements when we know that polar bears travel hundreds of miles, including swimming, how can one say to which sub-population one family of bears belong? Where’s the peer reviewed report?
Bob Fernley-Jones says: December 18, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Perhaps of interest in your entertaining searches?
Moller AP (1989) Ejaculate quality, testes size and sperm production in mammals Functional Ecology 3(1) p91-6 where he studies the literature published on 9 mammal species (species not described the overview however).
Finally, I would like to invite Palmer or anybody else interested to
personally inspect all data sheets in my office at their own expense to
erase any doubt about the existence of the authentic data. I have all my
notes since October 1969 neatly ordered so they are readily accessible. In
addition, I would like to invite anybody at their own expense to join me in
the field to see how asymmetry measurements are made, to check for feather
breakage or molt, and to observe variation in asymmetry among individuals. A
visit of less than a week would suffice for most people. And that would be a
memorable week for most people. Please address enquiries and bookings to
amoller@snv.jussieu.fr
Anders Pape Moller dated 17 October 2005
source: http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/palmer/pubs/05MollerComm/MollerExchange.htm
and the response to Moller’s offer, published 5 years later
Palmer AR & Hammond LM (2000)The Emperor’s Codpiece: A Post Modern Perspective on Biological Asymmetries Int’l Soc Behav. Ecol Newlsetter 12(2) p13-8
http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/palmer.hp/pubs/00ISBENews/PALMER_Forum.pdf
I note one of the Bruno’s photos posted where polar bears gathering to eat an ‘[old] grain spill’.
As such I am still not clear whether the photos depict the same group of bears, attracted to ‘a spill’. Old or not. Sampling bias? or tourism?
Additionally, I note that some posters think the polar bears may be proxy for some other argument. I was interested to read Over Fishing 101: Dissecting Sectors posted on your blog. And the reforms introducing voluntary cooperatives (termed ‘sectors’) under the New England Fisheries Mgt Council for groundfish fishing. The film posted [Beneath the Waves Film Festival 2012] ‘Sharks in Deep Trouble’ describe ‘modern humans as appearing 45,000 years ago and spread like a killer virus…’ and the need for …………. management.
http://theseamonster.net/
Al Gored said
“…Also, contrary to popular manufactured mythology, so are all North American grizzly bear populations with a few possible exceptions where there isn’t room for any more.”
* * *
Exactly right. And as a result of places where they’ve run out of room for their population explosion, they’ve done something simple; they moved.
On the islands littering the North West Coast, we are now seeing grizzlies that weren’t here as little as a few decades ago. The reason is because of island-hopping. Bears are excellent swimmers, and going back in forth between islands really isn’t a problem for them. ( Especially if there’s a good food source.)
The best sources of information on any wildlife are the people who live and work in an area all-year round.These are the people who keep records, and could tell you if anything has changed. Not some yuppy Greenpeace biologist who flies up for a few days and spends half of it in the hot tub at the Holiday Inn..
I grew up with black bears and cougars in the neighborhood. One time several friends of mine fell asleep on the beach in the hot sun. When they woke up, they were surrounded by cougar paw prints – prints that weren’t there an hour ago. Nobody wanted to go camping them again, that’s for sure.
J Felton @3.48 am
I am not sure that those who live AND work in an area all the year around always have the best source of information. Or at least they may have the best source of information [observation] but for a range of reasons that information does not get used [by academics] or is omitted. I noted much discussion on land and sea (changes), native populations, knowledge and hunting in the comments. And some on changes (and loss) in genetic material of populations [studied as hypothesised to be at risk].
The excerpt below I have not read being referenced by the Australian academics who [selectively] quote ‘on-the-ground’ experts Nor referenced as being a cause of loss of language/dialect (or particular cultural behaviour) in sub-groups. .
Professor Ted Strehlow Aborigines Artefacts and Anguish by Ward McNally 1981.
“He refrained from drawing the media’s attention –and thereby that of the judges – to any specific case known to him when vengeance had been taken in this way and killings had occurred; but he told me of one such incident that his father had been witness to, and which had resulted in the murder of numerous people.
Strehlow said: ‘I was a child of seven when the incident I’m about to relate occurred, and I still carry the memory of it in my mind. It was frightening.
There was some kind of hatred smouldering between the Western Arandas and the Kukatja. No one seemed to know what started it – only that it existed, and, from time to time, threatened the tranquillity of life as it then existed in the Hermannsburg part of central Australia…
During the early part of 1914, a big group of Kukatja men came to Hermannsburg community for an informal visit. Perhaps the Western Arandas had invited them in the hope of making a lasting peace with them. I don’t know if that was so or not – only that they came. And, for what seemed to me to be several weeks, both tribes appeared to get on very well together. All the Aborigines – the camp blacks (as those living in and around the Mission were called) and the Kukatja men – were extremely courteous to each other. But, eventually, old sores were uncovered and anger flared; when a fight was imminent, both sides agreed to go to X creek (which runs into X river, a good kilometre west of Hermannsburg) so that my father would not know about it, and it would be impossible for anyone to go and bring him back to put a stop to it before it was settled and someone was badly hurt.
Once the two groups arrived at the site designated for the fight, spears, boomerangs and even butcher knives were produced. Soon blood was flowing as members of the opposing groups slashed at each other vigorously. After a while, one of the Aranda men stuck his butcher knife into the leg of his Kukatja opponent, almost cutting the leg off at the knee. Naturally, with such a deep cut, the main artery was severed, and there was a sudden halt to proceedings as blood gushed from then man’s leg in spurts. Within the space of seconds, the Kukatja man fell dead from loss of blood. Then, almost without a single word, the Arandas felt ominously silent, collecting their belongings, and called to their women and children to follow them from the scene of the fatal fight….
A few weeks later, as I recall, a band of Kukatja blood-avengers rapidly made their way over the red sand hills near Gosse’s range. They were almost impossible to see in the night as they moved silently, avoiding all the known paths and the soakages. In the pale light of the moon they completed the remaining 30 or so kilometres to Hermannsburg and concealed themselves below the low stone hills that lay three or four hundred metres north-west of the Mission. They waited until 3am before they moved downwards towards the Aboriginal camp, taking protection in the darkness and the knowledge that, as the Aborigines say, “sleep seals the eyelids of the slumbering more securely in the small hours of the morning than at any other time”. Three groups of sleeping Aranda men and women, and perhaps as many dogs, slept on, unaware of the fate approaching them. By the time the blood-avengers were in position to strike at their sleeping victims, they could distinguish them clearly by the light from the dying glow of the fires that had warmed the sleepers throughout the chill of the night…
At a pre-arranged signal from the leader of the blood-avengers, the Kukatjas drove their spears into the bodies of their unsuspecting and unknown victims. Then they turned and fled, leaving many Aranda men, women and children dead or dying. The screams and the wailing that followed were frightening to hear, and friends who had been sleeping elsewhere rushed to the aid of the stricken, ripping out the barbed spear heads from wounds in which they had been left. The removal of the barbs caused ugly, deep gashes to be exposed, and those who were not killed in the revenge attack were in a desperate plight within two or three days, as their wounds became a squirming stench of maggots. It wasn’t long before those people died, too. If my memory serves me correctly, only three from something like 39 people lived through that attack…
So, you see, that is what tribal law can do…’ ”
And those that support such divisions in law between the peoples of a country.
John F. Bruno, I admire your tenacity. We skeptics are a cynical lot, so please forgive us if we either don’t believe or discount heavily any study about the supposed demise of the polar bears, especially when the study involves “models” and/or the buzzwords “global warming” and “climate change”.
When it comes to the polar bear populations themselves, polar bears are predators, and like every other predator, their population numbers go up and down with their prey populations. And being very mobile, polar bears can easily move to where the food is. And being omnivorous, they adapt their diet before they move to what is available. So if a population in a given area declines, we cannot say they are “threatened” or “endangered” unless we can prove without a doubt that the decrease is not due to migration (I’ll also throw in over-hunting). To the best of my knowlege, none of the alarmist “scientists” have even attempted to do that.
Jessie@512
Hadn’t thought of it that way! Thanks, much appreciated.
Just a comment about some of the responses to John Bruno.
Agreement with your own opinion(s) is not a prerequesite for courtesy and respect towards others. John has added information to the discussion. Whether you agree with his conclusions concerning the state of polar bear populations and any connection to environmental change or not, nothing good comes out of saying he’s a kook, lefty, acquainted with manipulators of data or any of the other rather foolish statements seen here. Consider this – do you want to be grouped with the following selection of well heard “voices” in the debate ; Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Tamino (aka Grant Foster) or even a lesser light such as dana1981? Voices who have no problem with being condenscending and resorting to name calling.
Jessie @ur momisugly December 19, 2:29 am
Thankyou Jessie for the additional entertainment, with a long and interesting comment. I’ve not had time to properly read the long Email stream, but I get the idea. The lengthy paper on how species internal interactions are enhanced by anatomical symmetry, (and comparison with opposites), was very smile producing for me, if a bit laboured on what would seem to be an extremely obvious condition, regardless of species. (and not warranting public funds to research in a big way). For instance, if Angelina Jolie had a substantially bent nose, or obviously asymmetric breasts, I doubt that she would be as cinematically popular as she is.
I only had a quick read of the paper but one thing I recollect as an item of great value was that a certain species of toad when vomiting does not convulse its body symmetrically, but skews and spews from one side. I must keep that in mind for my next dinner party, and maybe I should go through the paper again more thoroughly to see if there are any other gems to share, even if it might be the last dinner party I may be invited to.
Bob Fernley-Jones says: December 19, 2011 at 7:58 pm
🙂
Do make the time over the Christmas and the break into the New Year to watch Babette’s Feast Bob. A gem of a movie.
And of course the discourse re Moller et al.
I thoroughly enjoy your (and others) entertaining and informative posts on WUWT, thank you.
John F Bruno,
I notice that you have become rather quiet lately on this thread on certain questions that have been raised. Maybe you are too busy heading down to those nice coral reefs in the Southern Hemisphere, but meanwhile for the record, here is the text of a personal Email that I’ve sent you:
Whoops,
In my 9:57 pm above, I made a malapropism.
When I wrote loss of albedo, what I really meant was loss of libido
Sorry!
Crazy question for all of you illustrious graduates of University of Nowhere (who I hear has a wonderful science PhD programs). Suppose, hypothetically, that the natural habitat of the polar bear were being reduced… would this have the effect of increasing human-polar bear interaction, or decreasing it? Think REALLY hard here about what happens when an animal that NORMALLY prefers its seclusion doesn’t have the option of it.
Wow. Just… wow.
John Webb @ur momisugly December 28, 9:52 am
John,
In the context of your suggestion:
During the “warm” months, there is a tendency for the bears to remain on land because of less sea-ice, so population density is hardly altered by weather year to year. During the cold months, they are claimed to depend on the sea-ice, well, the males anyway, so again, their population density would not appear to be an issue. Pregnant females den on land of course, as may some non-pregnant females.
BTW, try dividing 20,000 to 25,000 by the land area over the huge range that they inhabit
You may be interested in this extract from: http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/polar-bears/bear-essentials-polar-style/adaptation/home-range-and-cold-climate