Sentences with phrase «beaufort bear numbers»

There is no evidence that record - low summer sea ice in 2012 had a harmful effect on Southern Beaufort bear numbers.

It shows just what lengths desperate IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) biologists will go to in order to link the recent decline of Southern Beaufort bear numbers to global warming while ignoring similar past declines.

Not exact matches

Tagged 16th meeting, 16th Working Meeting, baffin bay, Chukchi Sea, Davis Strait, IUCN, number of polar bears, PBSG, Peacock, Polar Bear Specialist Group, Southern Beaufort, Stapleton, western hudson bay

Polar bears are one of the most sensitive Arctic marine mammals to climate warming because they spend most of their lives on sea ice.35 Declining sea ice in northern Alaska is associated with smaller bears, probably because of less successful hunting of seals, which are themselves ice - dependent and so are projected to decline with diminishing ice and snow cover.36, 37,38,39 Although bears can give birth to cubs on sea ice, increasing numbers of female bears now come ashore in Alaska in the summer and fall40 and den on land.41 In Hudson Bay, Canada, the most studied population in the Arctic, sea ice is now absent for three weeks longer than just a few decades ago, resulting in less body fat, reduced survival of both the youngest and oldest bears, 42 and a population now estimated to be in decline43 and projected to be in jeopardy.44 Similar polar bear population declines are projected for the Beaufort Sea region.45

Even though 2012 had the longest open - water period in the Southern Beaufort since at least 1979 (see Fig. 4), researchers doing mark - recapture work in the area did not report large numbers of starving bears during the summer of 2012 or in the spring of 2013.