Going, going ...

Polar bears are in trouble as climate change devours their primary habitat
of northern ice. Canada has two-thirds of the world's polar bears -- and a
sorry record of ensuring their survival

BY ED STRUZIK, THE EDMONTON JOURNAL
FEBRUARY 22, 2009

A polar bear tagged by U of A researchers recently completed a 3,500-km trek
from its home range in the Northwest Territories to within 30 km of northern
Russia, and back again. Scientists fear;that the dwindling Arctic ice cap
may force more and more of the bears to travel enormous distances in search
of food.
Photograph by: Ed Struzik, the Journal, The Edmonton Journal

When University of Alberta scientist Andrew Derocher caught and tagged a
female polar bear in the southern Beaufort Sea last April, he didn't expect
that she would stray too far.

Keep in mind that "too far" is a relative term in the world of polar bear
science.

A small home range for a polar bear in the High Arctic can be 50,000 to
60,000 square kilometres. A large home range such as that in the Bering and
Chukchi seas in Alaska and Russia may be in excess of 350,000 square km.

Most polar bears tend to stick to these ranges so long as there is
sufficient sea ice and seals to hunt. Straying too far is not a good
strategy, because the bears usually know where their food should be. And
wandering too far is risky because it requires a lot of energy to look for
good ice conditions and food that might not materialize.

Every once in a while though, a bear will set off in one direction and keep
going.

A few have been tracked travelling as many as 1,000 kilometres in a year
from the spot where they were originally captured and tagged.

The movement of this bear, however, is one for the record books.

Shortly after the polar bear was captured near the Inuvialuit community of
Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories, she started heading west to the
Yukon and Alaska.

Once she crossed the American border, she didn't stop.

By the fourth week of November, she was within 30 kilometres of Wrangel
Island in northern Russia.

Then right around Christmas Day, she turned around, headed back to Alaska
and kept on going.

The last time Derocher checked in on her in late January by way of the
satellite transmitter attached to a collar around her neck, she was near the
Canadian border.

All told, she travelled more than 3,500 kilometres in less than nine months.

Seventeen years ago, U.S. Geological Survey scientists George Durner and
Steve Amstrup tracked a bear travelling an astonishing 5,256 km from the
Prudhoe Bay oilfields to within a few hundred kilometres of the North Pole.

At that time, an epic journey such as this one would have been viewed as a
rarity, a quirk in evolution that helps to maintain genetic diversity among
the 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in the world.

But scientists now suspect that more and more bears will be forced to make
long journeys like this in order to deal with the rapidly melting sea ice in
the Arctic.

Not only will this seriously tap the energy reserves of polar bears in
spring and winter, they say; it raises serious questions about the ability
of some bears to successfully reproduce and nurse their young, and to extend
their fast through the summer months when many of them are forced to go on
land.

Warnings like this are nothing new.

Everyone from Al Gore to the International Union on the Conservation on
Nature (IUCN) has been alerting the world to the plight of the polar bear in
a world where the sea ice is melting, shipping is increasing and oil and gas
activity is heating up.

In 2005, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group unanimously agreed that the
world's polar bear population would decline by nearly a third in the next 45
years. That time frame represents three generations of polar bears.

At the time, the forecast sounded like an extremely gloomy one.

Two years later, when the Arctic sea ice melted back to record levels, the
U.S. Geological Survey predicted that two-thirds of the world's polar bears,
including all of those in Alaska and most of Canada's western Arctic, will
be gone by 2050. The only ones remaining, the report allowed, will be those
animals inhabiting the High Arctic regions of Canada and western Greenland.

Faced with the hard facts outlined in the report by the U.S. Geological
Survey, the U.S. government reluctantly listed the polar bear as threatened
last year and then made a pact with Russia shortly afterward to find ways of
protecting the future of the animal in those two countries.

So far, Canada, the country with the largest polar bear population in the
world, has failed to come up with a management strategy to help the species
weather the climate change that is destroying polar bear habitat.

Following last month's round table on the future of the polar bear,
Environment Minister Jim Prentice offered little except to say that the
meeting was an important first step in integrating Inuit traditional
knowledge with western science. He made no mention of the "aggressive"
conservation strategy that former environment minister John Baird suggested
as a possibility if it proved necessary to keep the animal from becoming
"threatened" or "endangered."

"Climate change is important, but climate change is a planetary issue,"
Prentice said, following the meeting.

"And there are no single measures that Canada, acting alone, can undertake,
relative to climate change, that are going to change the circumstances on
the ice for polar bears in the immediate future."

Ironically, it was Baird and the Conservatives who accused the previous
Liberal government of "failure of leadership" for doing nothing in the three
years after Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada
(COSEWIC) recommended listing the polar bear as a "species of concern" in
2005, a designation that was first recommended in 1991.

But now, it seems, the shoe is on the other foot.

Like the Liberals, the Conservatives have done nothing for the polar bear
since COSEWIC issued its latest report nearly a year ago, reaffirming what
it recommended in 2005.

"We've written two letters, one to Baird and one to Prentice, and have got
no response to our proposals for polar bear conservation," says Pete Ewins,
director of species conservation for the World Wildlife Fund of Canada,
which is the biggest and most conservative conservation organization in the
country.

"There has been no indication that we're getting a report from the round
table meeting in Winnipeg either."

The idea for the round table was put forward by Baird last August just days
after The Journal revealed that the latest COSEWIC report was co-authored by
a scientist who believes that polar bears can adapt to a warming Arctic and
that climate change has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions.

That report was roundly denounced by most polar bear scientists who firmly
believe that the species is likely to become "endangered," and therefore in
need of being declared "threatened" in Canada.

Baird had envisioned the round table as bringing together environmental
groups, the Inuit and First Nations, provinces and territories and experts
in one place to chart the course on protecting this animal.

Neither he nor his advisers seemed to realize that COSEWIC has had a
sub-committee in place since 2001 to deal with traditional knowledge.

In the end, only three people -- Pete Ewins, Gabriel Nirlungayuk, director
of wildlife for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and Jeff Hutchings, the chairman of
COSEWIC -- were asked to make a formal presentation at the round table. The
remainder of the day was spent going around the table, allowing people to
say whatever they wanted.

The media were not invited.

Ewins reflected the view of several others in describing it as an exercise
in "science bashing."

"There were four polar bear scientists in the room and not one of them was
asked to make a formal presentation," he said. "I wasn't the only one who
got the sense that this was an attempt on the part of government to decouple
the climate change issue from polar bear conservation."

"It was strange," says Derocher, who agrees with Ewins' assessment.

"The whole thing was very tightly controlled. I'm still not sure who was all
there even. There were people lurking in the shadows that didn't seem to
belong. I can only presume that they came from the minister's office or the
Environment Department. As far as I'm concerned, it was a waste of time and
money."

Like the others, Jeff Hutchings had problems with the meeting.

"I think the goals could have been articulated more clearly," he said.

"On the positive side though, it did give the Inuit the reassurance that
their views count. I think that is extremely important because the polar
bear is such an important cultural symbol for them."

Hutchings himself has been on the hot seat for defending the COSEWIC report
and for taking issue with the U.S. Geological Survey's prediction that
two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be gone by 2050.

Hutchings sees the report merely as a "prototype" because the results are
based on the opinion of a single individual, Steve Amstrup of the U.S.
Geological Survey.

"A model like that requires input from multiple experts before it can be
considered final," he said.

He also questions whether the Bush administration would have listed the
polar bear as "threatened" if it had had a third option, as Canada does, to
designate it a "species of concern."

Hutchings' position has angered conservationists and polar bear scientists
alike here in Canada and abroad.

"The fact is the COSEWIC report is based on 10- year-old data and was
co-authored by a scientist who doesn't believe that climate change is a
serious threat to polar bears or that it is caused by greenhouse gas
emissions," says Derocher, who chairs the IUCN polar bear specialist group.

"There is no comparison between the quality of the U.S. Geological Survey
report and that which was written for COSEWIC. One was peer reviewed and
based on the best available scientific data. The other is nothing more than
a summary of the literature, some of which is outdated.

"COSEWIC spent about $25,000 on a literature review of 75 pages written by
three authors. The U.S. produced a 262-page report with eight authors and
provided about 464 pages of new science for their assessment.

"How much did that cost? I'll guess several hundred thousands of dollars."

Derocher has asked the IUCN polar bear specialist group, which has already
declared the polar bear, in effect, "threatened," to comment on the COSEWIC
report. He prefers not to predict how they will vote, but several have
already indicated that they will formally reject it when they meet later
this spring.

Derocher is clearly frustrated by the inaction of the Canadian government.

"That polar bears have not had a change in status since 1991 is amazing to
me," he said. "Does this mean that COSEWIC believes that nothing has changed
since 1991?"

Unintentional as it probably is, Hutchings' defence of the COSEWIC report
may have given Prentice and the Canadian government a reason not to do
anything.

He knows that and it worries him deeply.

"I think we need to get beyond this debate about whether the polar bear
should have been listed as 'threatened' or as a 'species of concern' and get
on with a management plan," he says. "We're all in agreement that some of
these populations are in trouble and the climate change is one of the
reasons why."

What worries Hutchings just as much is that the history has not been kind to
COSEWIC when it has made any kind of recommendation on species conservation
in the Arctic.

The plight of the Peary caribou is a striking example.

By 2001, the Peary caribou in the High Arctic had dropped from a population
of 26,000 animals in 1961 to fewer than 8,000. No one knows exactly what's
behind the collapse, which continues, but climate change and freak weather
events have been making it increasingly difficult for the caribou to dig
through the hard snow and ice to find food.

Since the Peary caribou was listed as endangered in 2004, no management plan
has ever been put in place. There is no indication that one will be coming
soon.

"That should outrage Canadians," says Hutchings. "A management plan is long
overdue in this case."

There is no shortage of groups and individuals who have an answer for the
plight of the polar bear.

Proposals have ranged from supplementary feeding programs to moving bears
from one region to another. Some hard-core environmentalists are calling for
an end to hunting.

One scientist has gone so far as to suggest that polar bears in western
Hudson Bay could feast on snow goose eggs to get them through the period of
climate change crisis.

Derocher dismisses these ideas as either "impractical" or "fantasy."

"Hunting is not the real issue and snow goose eggs are not going to meet the
energy needs of polar bears," he says.

In light of the fact that the average bear requires 45 to 50 ringed seals to
get it through the year, he doesn't see any way of feeding thousands of
polar bears each year. By way of example, it would take 900,000 seals to
feed 20,000 bears.

"The issue quite simply is habitat loss," says Derocher. "Until we deal with
climate change, the ice that represents the primary habitat of the polar
bear is going to continue to disappear."

The World Wildlife Fund has proposed measures that they and most polar bear
scientists say are needed to safeguard polar bear populations.

Those include a North American plan in which Canada, the United States and
Greenland would co-operate on a wide range of issues, including the mapping
and protection of key polar bear habitat, conservation measures that would
protect this habitat from industrial activity, and adequate funding for
traditional knowledge and for scientific research on polar bears and their
habitat.

Canada must also take a lead role in securing a fair, effective and
science-based global climate change agreement, according to the World
Wildlife Fund

"We agree completely with former environment minister John Baird, who
insisted that 'a declining polar bear population is not an option,' " said
Ewins.

"With two-thirds of the world's polar bears, Canada has a major
international responsibility to safeguard the future of these animals."