From the United States Geological Survey and the department of omnivorous dining comes this:
Polar bears unlikely to thrive on land-based foods
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A team of scientists led by the U.S. Geological Survey found that polar bears, increasingly forced on shore due to sea ice loss, may be eating terrestrial foods including berries, birds and eggs, but any nutritional gains are limited to a few individuals and likely cannot compensate for lost opportunities to consume their traditional, lipid-rich prey — ice seals.
“Although some polar bears may eat terrestrial foods, there is no evidence the behavior is widespread,” said Dr. Karyn Rode, lead author of the study and scientist with the USGS. “In the regions where terrestrial feeding by polar bears has been documented, polar bear body condition and survival rates have declined.”
The authors detail their findings in a review article in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The scientists noted that over much of the polar bear’s range, terrestrial habitats are already occupied by grizzly bears. Those grizzly bears occur at low densities and are some of the smallest of their species due to low food quality and availability. Further, they are a potential competitor as polar bears displaced from their sea ice habitats increasingly use the same land habitats as grizzly bears.
“The smaller size and low population density of grizzly bears in the Arctic provides a clear indication of the nutritional limitations of onshore habitats for supporting large bodied polar bears in meaningful numbers,” said Rode. “Grizzly bears and polar bears are likely to increasingly interact and potentially compete for terrestrial resources.”
The study found that fewer than 30 individual polar bears have been observed consuming bird eggs from any one population, which typically range from 900 to 2000 individuals. “There has been a fair bit of publicity about polar bears consuming bird eggs. However, this behavior is not yet common, and is unlikely to have population-level impacts on trends in body condition and survival,” said Rode.
Few foods are as energetically dense as marine prey. Studies suggest that polar bears consume the highest lipid diet of any species, which provides all essential nutrients and is ideal for maximizing fat deposition and minimizing energetic requirements. Potential foods found in the terrestrial environment are dominated by high-protein, low-fat animals and vegetation. Polar bears are not physiologically suited to digest plants, and it would be difficult for them to ingest the volumes that would be required to support their large body size.
“The reports of terrestrial feeding by polar bears provide important insights into the ecology of bears on land,” said Rode. “In this paper, we tried to put those observations into a broader context. Focused research will help us determine whether terrestrial foods could contribute to polar bear nutrition despite the physiological and nutritional limitations and the low availability of most terrestrial food resources. However, the evidence thus far suggests that increased consumption of terrestrial foods by polar bears is unlikely to offset declines in body condition and survival resulting from sea ice loss.”
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The review article was developed by researchers at the USGS, Washington State University, and Polar Bears International.
The USGS is leading studies of polar bear response to sea ice loss through its Changing Arctic Ecosystems Initiative. Current studies include examination of polar bear nutritional and behavioral ecology, linked to population-level consequences.
Why don’t polar bears eat Penguins? Because they can’t get the wrappers off! (Penguins are a popular chocolate covered biscuit here in UK)
Why ask the question at all if the seals are not going to go extinct in the Arctic and the Earth’s tilt causing winter is not going to going to change.
The only valid questions are can the bears survive with one month less sea ice near shore in the late summer and will there even be one month less sea ice near shore in the late summer.
I think the answer is climate science has caused too many people to worry about way too many impossible hypothetical musings and to not ask the right questions.
There have been periods of time in the earlier part of the current Interglacial period, that had little or NO summer ice at all in the polar region.
That implies not much spring ice then, since little or none of it is more than 2 years old,which would then be THIN ice year round.
Polar bear extinction would have no known (or conjectured) ecological impact.
Nature has a way of sorting things out and filling every available niche.
Life would be a lot safer for Inuit people. The real impact would be on the unemployment rate among USGS “scientists” (just why is USGS, a geology outfit, studying polar bears, a biology project?) who would have to find other objects of study and other sources of funding.
The USGS along with NASA and NOAA has been steadily destroyed by the ‘global warming’ scam.
I think we should all take the White Queen’s advice:
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
If you draw a long breath, and shut your eyes, you will find that you can believe Dr Karyn Rode.
And if you try much harder, you may even be able to believe Tim Flannery, James Hansen, Michael Mann and all.
Our good ol’ CBC radio news accepts Mann’s pronouncements as fact, viz one of their newscasts of April 4. I risk retching every time that the CBC has another of its global warming stories (This one accepted the cessation of the Gulf Stream as fact, quoting Mann as a reference.)
Ian M
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/19/5c/54/195c549766f4d8942825a4f7aba3c57e.jpg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00bxkf6
“Alan Titchmarsh visits Inchnadamph cave in Scotland. At the end of the 19th Century a Mr Peach and a Mr Horn found polar bear bones deep down in the cave”
Also found this
https://markgelbart.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/a-polar-bear-ursus-maritimus-fossil-in-breck-smith-cave-kentucky/
http://www.theclipartwizard.com/images/flags/Map_of_Kentucky.png
In both cases the sea being a bit of a journey, I feel that these polar bears were surviving on a seafood diet.
I have a strong feeling that in at least one on the ice extensions in the last “Ice Age” the ice could have stretched down to Kentucky. The Polar Bears (now the Kentucky Bears) would have shifted with it, hence the fossil remains of Polar Bears in Kentucky.
With the weight of ice on top of the land, it is plausible that Kentucky was at or below sea level – remember isostasy.
The grizzlies had probably gone to Texas or Mexico to keep warm.
I’m curious how much open water existed in the Arctic during the last glacial epoch? Did Canadian polar bears go through a population bottleneck due to limited hunting ranges? Were they forced to migrate south and compete with grizzlies?
Where are the paleo-climate reconstructionists when you need them?
Like much of ecological alarmism, this article is based on a fundamental logical flaw: it “normalizes” the recent past.
For instance, whatever polar bears have been doing — the geography and ecology of where they live, their diet, their behavior, their numbers, interactions with other species, etc. — in the past century or so is the norm, they think, and any departure from the norm will necessarily be deleterious. This way of thinking is founded on sheer assumption and extended by mere assertion.
I think the general response should be that the species in question would not have survived this long if it could not adapt to differing conditions. More specifically, we do not know how many polar bears there are now, let alone how many there were 50 or 500 or 5,000 or 50,000 years ago, so we do not know the “normal” population size, if any, and we have little or no actual observation of how polar bears have acclimated to different conditions — which they must have done, or there wouldn’t be any now — and we have no real, actual reasons to think they could not continue to adapt.
There WAS a steep decline in polar bear populations during the 20th century…due 100% to hunting with modern weapons. My godmother who was over 100 years old back in 1960, had a huge polar bear skin rug in her living room and it was very common for photographers to own a rug of this animal’s skin for photographs of small children.
Today, hunting is very limited and voila! Numbers have shot upwards again.
This study appears to ignore what else might happen when it warms. Others have mentioned seal moving to land, but it goes beyond that. With a warmer climate we should see the growth of more vegetation which will allow other species to expand into the area. Elk, caribou, deer, and other plant eating animals would expand their ranges and all of a sudden come into contact with the bears.
So many problems with this paper. Junk science at its worst.
You are so right!
This is the essential — and ludicrous — mistake most of the calamity papers by the Global Warming catastrophists are based on: dropping virtually the entire context.
In order to confirm their bias.
President Obama just gave Iran nuclear weapons. If he wants to see “global warming” just wait until those lunatics in Tehran start using them.
Polar bears may be thriving in reality, but they’re dying out in computer models. For some people, models are more meaningful than reality.
I too grieve deeply for the computer bears. Oh, but for some more computer ice and computer seals.
(The real bears are mostly doing well though. Dr Susan Crockford told me so.)
You’ve got it. The inconvenient facts must be wrong. Everyone knows our models and well thought out ideas are where the truth is.
David in Cal,
Obviously computer models are killing off large numbers of polar bears and should be severely regulated or eliminated to protect the bears. Bears are being pushed to extinction by a push of a button!
More NCC.
The “End”, shutdown any oil and gas exploration in the Arctic.
The “Means”, anything it takes, including bad science.
Have a look at current ice conditions for polar bears here:
http://polarbearscience.com/2015/04/03/superb-sea-ice-conditions-for-polar-bears-worldwide-during-their-critical-feeding-period/
Susan
thanks again Susan!
Susan – There was one thing that struck me in the article, that I would appreciate your comment on : I was struck by the symmetry re polar and grizzly bears – both were at the fringes of their normal territory, and both were reportedly smaller, presumably because in the fringe area there was less plentiful food. My interpretation is that this is a normal part of the evolutionary process, where animals may continually test their territory boundaries and the thus changing conditions cause changes in the animals , and that in this instance polar bears and grizzly bears are doing exactly the same thing. [A study of cane toads in Northern Australia, where they are continually spreading into new territory, found changes occurring very rapidly, with (from memory) the toads getting larger and longer-legged, and also developing arthritis.]
Check this link and look at the graphs of Polar Bear populations in Canada, ( fig 2, page 10 ) and the stable numbers in regions further south. This does not quite agree with this research article does it ?
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2014/08/healthy-polarbears.pdf
I find the evidence of an open landfill in a remote place distressing. All that wood they could burn in their stoves would have been a good start in reducing the load of trash.
So all of the zoo’s that have polar bears only feed them seals. Wow! Oh wait no I think they feed them like they would any other bear on a variety of foods.
I was also wondering how many seals the zoos are feeding the polar bears. Not many.
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/sites/default/files/pbnutritionguidelines.pdf
https://www.aza.org/uploadedfiles/animal_care_and_management/husbandry,_health,_and_welfare/husbandry_and_animal_care/polarbearcaremanual.pdf
http://www.kctv5.com/category/244581/nikita-berlin-polar-bear-cam (autoplay ad)
“Nikita eats about 16 pounds of fish (herring, capelin and trout), 5 pounds of dog food and 1 ½ pounds of lard each day. He receives other food like fruits and vegetables as treats and rewards in his training.”
http://www.aalborgzoo.dk/the-polar-bear-enclosure.aspx
“In the wild, polar bears primarily eat seals but like all bears, they eat everything, and in the zoo the menu also comprises fruits and vegetables, to where seeing a polar bear eating an apple or carrot is not unusual at all! Polar bears are primarily fed, however, horsemeat and lard.”
Polar bears and brown bears are genetically related so occupying the same space is nothing new.http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/arctic-bears-how-grizzlies-evolved-into-polar-bears/777/
Also, IF the world was to get warmer and there was to be consistently less ice in the arctic, then:
a) Polar bears will require less fattening to get them through the winter,
b) Polar bears will be able to eat for a longer season,
c) Seals will be forced to breed on land which means the Polar bears won’t have to travel all the way out to the ice which is where the seals go to try to escape the Polar bears!
Yeah but Russians and Manitobans DO throw their used seals in the garbage.
See http://polarbearscience.com/2015/04/01/polar-bear-consumption-of-terrestrial-foods-new-paper-misses-the-point/
First it was save the seal, now it’s save the Polar bears so they can kill the seals.
People I guess find all kinds of ways to justify their existence. I may start a save the berries. Polar bears eating the berries is totally disrupting the ecology where the berries exist and it is not fair to insects, smaller mammals and birds. We need ecological justice for the berry!
On a serious note the peer review process of this paper, lacking even a minutiae of critical thinking or adequate subject knowledge was garbage. More broadly it provides another example of the degrading quality and integrity of the peer review process.
I suspect this is an old but useful propaganda photo.
From Government of Manitoba on Churchill:
The Polar Bear Alert Program is preventative in nature by minimizing the possibilities of unsafe or unexpected interactions between people and polar bears. To accomplish this, a control zone around the immediate Churchill townsite and former dump was established in which polar bears are not allowed. Conservation staff will also respond to requests made by the public to areas outside of the zone if a polar bear is considered to be a threat. A 24-hour hotline (675-2327 or 675-Bear) i
Oops. Poor reading of caption on iPhone. Sorry.
oh for crying out loud….is this the 18th century or something?
…someone open a Go-Fund-Me page for the poor bears
and by them a ton of this crap
http://www.mazuri.com/mazuripolarbeardiet.aspx
Ok, I give up. Where did the seals go? Are the grizzly bears eating the seals? That would surprise me.
I think “people” (humans) are on the menu …. bon Appetite !
Does anyone remember “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom”? There was an episode about polar bears raiding garbage dumps,.A program was implemented to tranquilize them and move them out by helicopter. Many would actually cover large distances to get back. I suppose they calculated that the food density was just fine and was worth the expenditure.
As a youngster, I had no idea how expensive that sounds! (:
My radar for grey papers is going off. I don’t think this is actual original research. This might be a grey paper that tried to sound like actual original research. My guess is that it is a review of research. If it is, this is the worst kind of offense by climate change scientists. They try to journal-legitimize what is actually their biased opinion.
So you would assert that this an instance of graydar? 😀
Pamela, as far as I’ve seen, this is one of very few instances of “disagreement” within polar bear science. So it figures it would be over a trivial matter.
One group (Rockwell and co.) are trying to argue (at least in part) that when the ice-free “armageddon” arrives, land-based foods will buffer the survival of bears spending more time on land. The other group is arguing (among other things) that only a few bears eat land-based foods now, so it won’t make a difference – polar bears are doomed when the ice-free “armageddon” arrives.
Both perspectives assume that the ice-free “armageddon” is a given.
I say their land-based food fight is a red herring, for the reasons given in my two posts: 1) bears do most of their consumption of seals (baby seals) in the spring and, 2) the biologist’s ice models predict only slight declines of sea ice in spring – when they talk about “sea ice declines” they mean SUMMER ice (September).
Susan
A review is “the worst kind of offense”? An interesting view… but one that won’t be widely shared. Considering that the journal ran the article under the header REVIEWS REVIEWS REVIEWS I doubt that anyone was trying to pull a fast one.
From ‘Can polar bears use terrestrial foods to offset lost ice-based hunting opportunities?’:
“Here, we revisit the question of whether, and to what extent, polar bears may benefit from terrestrial foraging. We consider the importance of terrestrial foraging at three scales: (1) across polar bears’ circumpolar range relative to the availability and abundance of terrestrial foods, as well as to the potential limitations of competing with brown bears (Ursus arctos) for these resources; (2) at the population level; and (3) at the individual level relative to meeting energy and nutrient requirements.”