Polar Bears Are Thriving

Discussion in 'Environment & Conservation' started by Jack Hays, Jan 1, 2021.

  1. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Where were the starving W. Hudson Bay polar bears in 2020 if the population had declined by 2021?

    Posted on January 3, 2023 | Comments Offon Where were the starving W. Hudson Bay polar bears in 2020 if the population had declined by 2021?
    Polar bears are supposed to starve before they die, the experts said. They said only a few years ago that dead or emaciated individuals onshore were evidence that many polar bears would soon be dying of starvation out on the sea ice. So, if the Western Hudson Bay (WH) subpopulation had indeed dropped by 27% by late summer 2021 as researchers claimed, where are all the photos of starving bears in the fall of 2020, the year before the count? The photo below of a thin female and cub was taken in late fall of 2021 (the year of the count) by a stationary web cam. In other words, some bears came off the ice without an optimal amount of fat because of poor hunting conditions over the winter but they were still alive. We know that 2020 had the shortest ice-free season in at least 20 years (and no similar images were captured), so bears went into the winter of 2020/2021 in good condition. Ditto for 2017-2019. In contrast to 2021, in 2016 (the year of the previous survey that also indicated a declining population size), bears reportedly came off the ice in good condition.

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    All I’ve seen are photos of fat bears and fat cubs, even a triplet litter in fall 2020. The shore of WH near Churchill should have been abounding with starving bears in 2020 (and in 2015), if the experts were right about starving bears preceding a population decline. More importantly, where are the studies on food-deprived bears onshore, as were done in the 1980s when WH bears were emaciated and cub survival poor (e.g. Ramsay et al. 1988)? WH bears are being used exclusively to model an implausibly pessimistic future for polar bears across the entire Arctic (Molnar et al. 2010; 2020), which means lack of good science for WH polar bears has big consequences. Covid restrictions in two of those ten years don’t excuse lack of study on this phenomenon.

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  2. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Inuit in Arctic Canada now observing higher numbers of polar bears, says government report
    Posted on January 4, 2023 | Comments Offon Inuit in Arctic Canada now observing higher numbers of polar bears, says government report
    A 2021 publication by the government of Canada released last month called Species at Risk in Nunavut says the region is “now observing higher numbers of polar bears“, and that management goals are “more focused on maintaining or reducing numbers in communities and in sensitive areas (i.e. bird colonies)“. Local Inuit are said to be “concerned about the increasing number of encounters and property damages” caused by polar bears.

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    Polar bear in Arviat, Nunavut, 3 October 2022. Chris Mikijuniak photo.
    Polar bears in Canada are considered a species of ‘special concern’ (COSEWIC 2018), not threatened as they are in the USA. See the map of Nunavut below.

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  3. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Recent paper on W. Hudson Bay polar bears includes new official sea ice freeze-up data

    Posted on January 12, 2023 | Comments Offon Recent paper on W. Hudson Bay polar bears includes new official sea ice freeze-up data
    Even though it’s in graph form only, we finally have an update on sea ice freeze-up dates for Western Hudson Bay for 2016-2020 (but not breakup dates).

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    This graphed data published by Miller et al. 2022 extends by five years that published in 2017 by Castro de la Guardia and colleagues, which contained graphed data for breakup and freeze-up dates from 1979-2015 (with exact dates for 2005-2008 only).

    It confirms a statement I made last month, that between 2016 and 2021 “there has been only one ‘late’ freeze-up year (2016)–but five very early ones.” Of course, 2021 was not included in this new dataset, so that would be “four very early ones” up to 2020.

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  4. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Climate activists have chosen to lie about polar bear statistics.

    Activist fact-checkers are misleading the public on polar bear numbers

    Posted on January 16, 2023 | Comments Offon Activist fact-checkers are misleading the public on polar bear numbers
    My press release response to activist ‘fact checkers‘ attacking a graph used by Bjorn Lomborg on social media:

    Canadian zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford warns that some polar bear specialists are attempting to cast a smoke-screen over the growth of global polar bear numbers.


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  6. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Lomborg responds to polar bear abundance challenge

    Posted on January 27, 2023 | Comments Offon Lomborg responds to polar bear abundance challenge
    Money quote from Bjorn Lomborg’s response to being ‘fact-checked’ on polar bear numbers, Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2023:

    It does more good for polar bears, and the rest of us, if those trying to help them use accurate facts.”

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    Lomborg responds himself after I challenged the ‘fact-checkers’ last week:

    Relying on the data I referenced used to be uncontroversial. When a CNN science journalist did an investigation similar to AFP’s in 2008, he spoke to numerous scientists and they agreed “that polar bear populations have, in all likelihood, increased in the past several decades.” When polar bears in 2008 were listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, the decision noted that the population “has grown from a low of about 12,000 in the late 1960’s to a current worldwide estimate of 20,000-25,000.” The data here haven’t changed, only the media’s willingness to disregard annoying facts.

    The result is that the public is denied access to accurate data and open debate about these very important topics. Ridiculous points on one side are left standing while so-called fact-checking censors inconvenient truths. If we’re to make good climate policy, voters need a full picture of the facts. Lomborg 2023, backup link

    I would add this fact: in 1982, polar bears were listed by the IUCN as ‘vulnerable’ but by 1996, that had changed to ‘lower risk/conservation dependent’–now called ‘least concern‘ (see screencap below) because population numbers had rebounded after more than 20 years of international protection from over-hunting. The reversion to ‘vulnerable’ in 2006 was based entirely on predictions that population numbers would decline in the future due to see ice loss, which so far has not happened (Crockford 2017, 2019; Crockford and Geist 2018).

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  7. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Polar bear that mauled to death Alaskan mother and baby was an adult male in poor condition

    Posted on February 6, 2023 | Comments Offon Polar bear that mauled to death Alaskan mother and baby was an adult male in poor condition
    The veterinarian who examined the bear responsible for the fatal attack in Wales, Alaska, three weeks ago said the bear was an “older” adult male in poor physical condition: the most dangerous bear for anyone to encounter. Recall the armed cruise ship guard who was ambushed and mauled by a desperately thin bear in July 2018 in the Svalbard archipelago–and only survived because his colleague was able to shoot the bear quickly. In this most recent attack, Summer Myomick and her 1-year-old son, Clyde Ongtowasruk didn’t stand a chance as they were ambushed in a driving snowstorm just steps from the safety of the community school they had just left.

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    Results of a complete necropsy won’t be available for months. Quotes from the news report below.

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  8. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Low mid-winter polar bear habitat in Barents Sea spawns warnings of more human-bear conflicts

    Posted on February 17, 2023 | Comments Offon Low mid-winter polar bear habitat in Barents Sea spawns warnings of more human-bear conflicts
    There’s abundant sea ice in the Bering, Greenland and Labrador Seas, although less than usual in the Barents Sea because strong winds drove the ice north. Any time there is a bit less sea ice than usual the catastrophists begin caterwauling but this time the rhetoric is a little different.

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  9. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Published field study observations – not population size – prove polar bears are thriving

    Posted on February 23, 2023 | Comments Offon Published field study observations – not population size – prove polar bears are thriving
    There is irrefutable evidence from Barents and Chukchi Sea subpopulations, among others, that polar bears are fat and reproducing well despite marked declines in summer sea ice over the last two decades. These indicators of physical and reproductive health, in any species, are signs of thriving populations. However, these facts negate the premise that polar bears require abundant summer sea ice to flourish, and that creates a problem for polar bear specialists who continue to make that claim (Amstrup et al. 2007; Crockford 2017, 2019).

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    Enormously fat Chukchi Sea polar bear, USFWS.
    In other words, the assessment that polar bears are currently thriving is not based solely on estimates of a slight increase in global population size but on published data gathered from field studies on the bears’ physical and reproductive health.

    Oddly, biologists repeatedly turn to data from Western Hudson Bay to drive home to the public their preferred message that polar bear health and abundance are being negatively affected by recent summer sea ice declines. However, they fail to mention that robust field data from many other regions, including the Barents and Chukchi Seas, support the opposite conclusion. Moreover, wherever possible, they mumble under their breath (or leave out entirely) the fact that poor ice conditions could not be blamed for a 27% decline in polar bear numbers in Western Hudson Bay since 2016 — because their own data showed sea ice conditions had been strong!

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  10. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Polar Wildlife Report reveals Arctic and Antarctic animals were thriving in 2022

    Posted on February 27, 2023 | Polar Wildlife Report reveals Arctic and Antarctic animals were thriving in 2022
    The Polar Wildlife Report is a peer reviewed summary of the most recent information on polar animals, relative to historical records, based on a review of 2022 scientific literature and media reports. It is intended for a wide audience, including scientists, teachers, students, decision-makers and the general public interested in animals that live in Arctic and Antarctic habitats, including polar bears, killer whales, krill, and penguins.

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    Last edited: Feb 27, 2023
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    Early-birthing polar bear female with new cubs out on the ice already in Western Hudson Bay

    Posted on March 5, 2023 | Comments Offon Early-birthing polar bear female with new cubs out on the ice already in Western Hudson Bay
    At least a month earlier than in more northerly areas of the Arctic, the first known female with new cubs-of-the-year has been reported on the sea ice hunting for seals in Western Hudson Bay. Remember this when the cries of “early” breakup of sea ice on Hudson Bay come in the summer: these WH bears routinely get a head start on spring feeding that other bears don’t get.

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  12. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Polar bear sightings and sea ice conditions in Newfoundland & Labrador 2023 vs. 2017

    Posted on March 10, 2023 | Comments Offon Polar bear sightings and sea ice conditions in Newfoundland & Labrador 2023 vs. 2017
    Conservation officials issued an alert to residents of coastal communities to be aware of polar bears coming ashore over the last week in northern Newfoundland and southern Labrador, after a woman photographed a bear outside her home on Tuesday morning (7 March 2023). Since no bears in this subpopulation are tracked with satellite radio collars, we have no idea if there are a few dozen bears — or a few hundred of them — hunting on the ice and available to come ashore when the opportunity arises.

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    Recall that in April 2017, after more than a dozen bears had been spotted onshore in the region since early March, polar bear specialist Andrew Derocher told CBC Radio that this was bad news for the bears.

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  13. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Birthing season for harp seals in Labrador Sea just in time to feed hungry polar bears

    Posted on March 15, 2023 | Comments Offon Birthing season for harp seals in Labrador Sea just in time to feed hungry polar bears
    The main birthing period for NW Atlantic harp seals has arrived. Local populations of ringed and bearded seal pups will soon follow but in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in eastern Canada, the pupping season for harp seals that is usually in progress by this time has likely been redirected north due to lack of suitable ice conditions. Sea ice off Labrador and Newfoundland is in good condition and this is where the vast majority of the global population go to give birth (ca. 7.6 million vs. 1.5 million in the White Sea and 434,000 in east Greenland).



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  14. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Ice-entrapped dolphins in Newfoundland lucky not to have been eaten by polar bears
    Posted on March 12, 2023 | Comments Offon Ice-entrapped dolphins in Newfoundland lucky not to have been eaten by polar bears
    A small pod of white-beaked dolphins entrapped on Friday (10 March) by a sudden surge of ice along the northern Newfoundland coast were lucky to have been rescued by humans before polar bears could get to them. We know the bears are around, drawn south by the millions of harp seals giving birth to their pups in the area. In April 2014, something similar happened to white-beaked dolphins in Svalbard and they became a welcome meal for at least six polar bears (Aars et al. 2015).

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  15. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Return of Svalbard sea ice in time for seal births and the polar bear feeding bonanza

    Posted on March 16, 2023 | Comments Offon Return of Svalbard sea ice in time for seal births and the polar bear feeding bonanza
    It seems that every fall and winter for the last decade at least, there has been hand-wringing about the lack of Svalbard sea ice and what a tragedy this is for polar bears. And like clockwork, before the end of winter (30 March) every year, the pack ice returns in time for spring: for ringed and bearded seals to give birth–and for the polar bears to gorge themselves on the fat newborns.

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    This year there is even ice as far south as Bear Island (Bjørnøya) and it’s only 15 March. This has happened several times now in the last 10 year. So much for the catastrophe! And soon Norwegian biologists will be out checking on the health of these bears, which they do every year and report their results online for everyone to see.

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  16. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    15 years after ESA listing as ‘threatened’ due to sea ice loss polar bears are abundant & thriving

    Posted on March 20, 2023 | 15 years after ESA listing as ‘threatened’ due to sea ice loss polar bears are abundant & thriving
    Experts who used the American Endangered Species Act (ESA) to list polar bears as ‘threatened’ in May 2008 were mistaken: sea ice authorities got their predictions wrong about future ice extent and polar bear specialists erroneously declared that two-thirds of polar bears would disappear if summer sea ice declines continued unabated.

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    By 2007, there was even less summer sea ice than computer models of the day had predicted (Stroeve et al. 2007, see red line on graph below) and in 2012, it dropped to just above 3 mkm2.

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    Simplified Arctic sea ice predictions vs. observations up to 2007 by Stroeve et al. 2007 (courtesy Wikimedia). Sea ice hit an even lower extent in 2012 and all years since then have been below these predicted levels.

    Updated sea ice predictions published in 2014 by the Stroeve team (see below) went to the other extreme, using totally implausible RCP 8.5 scenarios to predict a virtually ice-free Arctic (< 1 mkm2 ice extent) before 2040, which seem just as likely to be just as wrong as their 2007 attempt (Hausfather and Peters 2020; Pielke and Ritchie 2021; Stroeve et al. 2007, 2014; Swart et al. 2015).

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    From Stoeve et al. 2014, courtesy NSIDC January 2015.
    In fact, for 12 years out of the last 15, summer ice extent has been below 5.0 mkm2 (often well below), which polar bear experts had not anticipated would happen until at least 2050 (Amstrup et al. 2006).

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    In 2012, NOAA sea ice experts summarized this sea ice loss as “reduced by nearly 50%” since 1979:

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    Despite this dramatic decline in sea ice, polar bears are still abundant and thriving because polar bear specialists got it wrong about the bears’ need for this habitat in summer (Crockford 2017, 2019; Crockford and Geist 2018). Polar bear turned out to be more flexible and resilient than predicted and many subpopulations are better off than before. Davis Strait and Chukchi Sea bears are doing very well: Barents Sea bears in particular are thriving despite by far the most sea ice loss of any Arctic region (e.g. Conn et al. 2021; Frey et al. 2022; Haavik 2022; Lippold et al. 2019; Peacock et al. 2013; Regehr et al. 2018; Rode et al. 2014, 2018, 2021, 2022).

    This was not what had been predicted when the bears were listed as ‘threatened’ in 2008.

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    Conclusion: Despite the Arctic warming four times as fast as the rest of the world with rising CO2 levels and almost 50% less summer ice than there was in 1979, polar bears are no closer to extinction than they were 15 years ago, according to the results of field studies. There is no existential emergency for polar bears or any other Arctic sea mammals due to declining summer sea ice, despite continued messages of doom from remorseless experts.
     
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  17. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Southern Labrador coastal landscape dominated by fat polar bears in March

    Posted on March 30, 2023 | Comments Offon Southern Labrador coastal landscape dominated by fat polar bears in March
    Recent reports out of southern Labrador highlight how common it is to find polar bears onshore at this time of year. The small coastal community of Black Tickle seems to take the prize for the highest number of incidents and sightings but Happy Valley-Goose Bay is the somewhat surprising contender. [see correction below] Photo below is from Black Tickle.

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    Since early March, polar bear sightings in Newfoundland and Labrador have been common. The bears, of course, have come south on the Labrador Sea pack ice looking for fat newborn harp seals, which are now so abundant in the region that nearly a year’s worth of food could probably be consumed in a week or so. It appears that already well-fed bears may look around for what else could be added to their menu or just need a break to digest between meals. Photos of some of the bears sighted are all in good or excellent condition, and few of the animals seem to be intent on causing real trouble for locals–a far cry from the bear that wandered off the ice into Wales, Alaska earlier this year and killed a young mother and her infant son.

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  18. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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  19. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Russian walrus and polar bears continue to thrive US researchers tell the Washington Post

    Posted on April 15, 2023 | Comments Offon Russian walrus and polar bears continue to thrive US researchers tell the Washington Post
    Interviews with US researchers for a piece in the Washington Post earlier today contain revelations that walrus and polar bear populations in the Russian Far East continue to thrive, despite insisting that polar bears face a dire future without human interference.

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    This article on collateral damage of Russia’s war with Ukraine comes with this stunning sub-headline:

    The invasion [of Ukraine] is first and foremost a human tragedy, but it is also dire for wildlife, stalling scientific work on polar bears and other wildlife threatened with extinction.

    The article prominently features a researcher working on Chukchi sea polar bears, which are currently thriving but still tagged with a status of “threatened” based entirely on computer models that predict a dire outcome 30 years from now. The writer also interviewed a scientist working on Pacific walrus, which likely number more than 200,000 animals and are not considered “threatened,” a point oddly not mentioned by the author or the researcher interviewed (Crockford 2023; MacCracken et al. 2017; Fischbach et al. 2022; USFWS 2017a,b).

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  20. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    ‘Less ice means more conflicts with polar bears’ narrative not supported by scientific evidence

    Posted on April 19, 2023 | Comments Offon ‘Less ice means more conflicts with polar bears’ narrative not supported by scientific evidence
    In another failed prediction, a new study on the number of polar bears killed in self-defense in Svalbard, Norway did not find the expected correlation with lack of sea ice or more tourists (Vongraven et al. 2023). Contrary to expectations, fewer bears were actually killed in self-defence as sea ice declined between 1987 and 2019.

    Money Quote from the abstract:

    …ice cover had no significant impact on the odds for a [polar bear] kill.”

    It seems the warning from polar bear specialist Andrew Derocher a few months ago was just plain wrong:

    “Poor ice conditions for polar bears at Svalbard this year. Low ice will make tough hunting conditions this coming spring. Time to plan for more human-bear conflicts unless conditions change.” [13 Feb 2023 tweet, my bold]

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  21. Jack Hays

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    Netflix polar bear star dies in Svalbard days after being tranquilized; her orphaned cub is shot

    Posted on April 23, 2023 | Comments Offon Netflix polar bear star dies in Svalbard days after being tranquilized; her orphaned cub is shot
    Early in the morning on Good Friday (7 April), a mature polar bear sow with a cub at heal was chased with snowmobiles away from a recreation area used by locals on the west coast but drowned after she escaped into the water. Her cub, likely a yearling male, attacked authorities trying to retrieve her body and was shot.

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    It turns out this 17 year old female was well known to locals and is considered Svalbard’s most famous polar bear. They call her ‘Frost.’ She featured in the 2019 Attenborough-narrated Netflix documentary Our Planet, in the sequence showing the stalk of a newborn ringed seal pup (see screencap above), which was likely filmed in early 2018 after the cliff-falling walrus scenes in Russia that were filmed in October 2017. h/t Sheila.

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  22. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    17th century documents & 1970s ice maps show sea ice habitat in Svalbard has always varied greatly

    Posted on May 3, 2023 | Comments Offon 17th century documents & 1970s ice maps show sea ice habitat in Svalbard has always varied greatly
    Historical records show that sea ice extent along the west coast of Svalbard, Norway varied greatly in the 1600s and that there is currently more ice than was usually present at this time of year in the 17th century.

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    April through early June is when polar bears need sea ice the most–for feeding on newborn seals and for finding mates–and so far this spring, bears in the Western European Arctic around Svalbard, Norway have had an abundance of ice. In fact, there is only a little less ice than was normal for the late 1970s and apparently, quite a bit more than was often present in the 1600s.

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  23. Jack Hays

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    Polar bears in W. Hudson Bay are in good shape, says researcher. So are numbers really falling?

    Posted on May 13, 2023 | Comments Offon Polar bears in W. Hudson Bay are in good shape, says researcher. So are numbers really falling?
    We’ve got ourselves another round of field data–i.e., facts–not fitting the polar-bears-are-starving-to-death narrative. According to polar bear specialist Andrew Derocher, Western Hudson Bay polar bears his team saw in April while installing collars and ear tags were in good shape this year, as he said they were last year. There was no spring field work in 2021 and 2020 but in 2019, he also said the bears he saw were in good condition.

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    Andrew Derocher 4 May 2023, reporting on Western Hudson Bay field work
    Two years in a row of bears in good condition in spring–with no mention of starving bears–does not fit the picture of a population supposedly declining due to starvation. The most recent population count for WH, which garnered wide-spread media attention just before Christmas last year, claims that a 27% decline in numbers took place between 2017 and the fall of 2021 even though sea ice conditions had been good during those five years as well. It’s a perplexing situation. Makes me really wonder what that survey report actually says, but it still hasn’t been released, five months after the results made news around the world.

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  24. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    The story of polar bear evolution could not be told without discussing climate change

    Posted on May 30, 2023 | Comments Offon The story of polar bear evolution could not be told without discussing climate change
    Polar bears arose as a new species because the climate changed and forced some brown bears to colonize the sea ice. Polar bears epitomize the story of how evolution works but perhaps not quite how you imagined it.

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    Moving from extremes in warmth to extremes in cold characterized the last million years of geological history, as the graph above shows, where odd-numbered Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) are warm interglacials and even-numbered stages along the bottom are cold glacials. MIS 2 was the Last Glacial Maximum.

    But where and when during this period of change did polar bears come to be–and how, exactly, did it happen? My new book tells the whole story, which has never been done before. Not long to wait now, the release date is only about a week away (1st week June).

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  25. Jack Hays

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    Grizzlies vs. grizzly X polar bear hybrids by appearance alone: a photo essay

    Posted on June 2, 2023 | Comments Offon Grizzlies vs. grizzly X polar bear hybrids by appearance alone: a photo essay
    Hybridization with grizzlies comes up repeatedly in genetic studies that aim to zero in on polar bear origins and is one of the issues I explore in detail in my upcoming new book, Polar Bear Evolution: A Model for How New Species Arise. Here is a photo essay to get you thinking about grizzly X polar bear hybrids, because understanding the topic is critical to unravelling the genetic evidence on how polar bears came to be.

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    For example, who can forget the hoopla over the bear shot near Arviat on the shore of Western Hudson Bay in 2016 (shown above) that everyone, including polar bear expert Ian Stirling, decided must be a hybrid–but it turned out to be a blonde grizzly.

    Explaining all the ins and outs of why hybrids are important to polar bear evolution is an important part of my book.

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