A new paper
by polar bear biologists (Rode et al. 2015) argues that terrestrial (land - based) foods are not important to polar bears now and will not be in the future — a conclusion I totally agree with — but they miss the point entirely regarding the importance of this issue.
Not exact matches
It is pushing for new oil and gas drilling in
polar bear habitat while
biologists for Interior Department, prodded
by legal action, recommended the
bear be given threatened status under the species act because of the warming of the Arctic and summer retreat of sea ice.
[Oct. 2, 2012, 1:23 p.m. Updated Charles Monnett, the federal
biologist at the heart of the investigation described below, has been cleared of scientific misconduct over his
polar bear surveys (report link), but his case remains a source of disputes at several levels — as described in detail
by Jill Burke in Alaska Dispatch.
The new
polar bear paper is
by a group of authors led
by Steven Amstrup, the United States Geological Survey
polar bear biologist who led the government analysis of the
bear's prospects.
Steven C. Amstrup, the federal
biologist who led an analysis last year concluding that the world's
polar bear population could shrink two thirds
by 2050 under moderate projections for retreating summer sea ice, is once again in the field along Alaska's Arctic coast, studying this year's brood of cubs, yearlings and mothers.
While Mr. Kempthorne and Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said Wednesday that they saw no separate risk to
polar bears from oil and gas activity, the latest assessment of the species for the International Conservation Union,
by a group of experts including Fish and Wildlife Service
biologists, did include such activity in a list of threats, including toxic contaminants, shipping and recreational viewing.
Many Arctic
biologists insist that
polar bears are not just threatened
by future global warming and a «melting ice cap.»
A new paper that combines paleoclimatology data for the last 56 million years with molecular genetic evidence concludes there were no biological extinctions [of Arctic marine animals] over the last 1.5 M years despite profound Arctic sea ice changes that included ice - free summers:
polar bears, seals, walrus and other species successfully adapted to habitat changes that exceeded those predicted
by USGS and US Fish and Wildlife
polar bear biologists over the next 100 years.
The low - ice future that
biologists said would doom
polar bears to extinction
by 2050 has already happened in 8 out of the last 10 years.
Oddly,
polar bear biologists chose to dispel the serious concerns over invasive research
by presenting the outputs of computer models.