Urban Vancouver

It was a hollow victory for environmental groups and the poster child of global warming, the polar bear. In May, the US Government finally listed the polar bear as threatened, but stated clearly that the bears would be given no additional protection beyond what is already provided by the Marine Mammal Act.

Now the Bush administration has also granted permission to oil and gas companies to harass “small numbers” of polar bears and walruses in the Chukchi Sea, stating that the major threat to the bear is climate change, not oil and gas exploration. Employees will be trained in how to handle bear encounters, but the companies will not be held liable if the bears are unintentionally harmed.

Environmental groups are suing the government because it has failed to protect the bears by addressing climate change. Coming at them from the other side, the state of Alaska is also suing the government to revoke the bear’s “threatened” designation, concerned that it will endanger oil and gas development.

Polar bears wishing to emigrate aren’t having any better luck in other countries. A wandering polar bear was recently shot and killed in Iceland, the first seen on the island in twenty years.

Take steps to protect the polar bear at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Finally, the US can point some fingers elsewhere. China has recently become the world’s dominant source of carbon dioxide emissions, contributing 14% more to the atmosphere than the United States, according to a Dutch study.

China is heavily dependent on coal, and, as a developing nation, has resisted pressure to reduce emissions that would reduce its economic growth. China also points out that its footprint is 5.1 tons per person, unlike the average American, who outputs a whopping 19.4 tons of carbon dioxide.

What’s your carbon footprint?

The Interior Department of the United States government has until May 15 to decide whether or not the polar bear should be considered a threatened species. The decision was originally due on January 9, 2008 based on a petition that began in 2005. While the Fish and Wildlife Service has been stalling, the Bush administration has been busy planning oil and gas leases on the Chukchi Sea, which is a known polar bear habitat.

There’s no guarantee that the polar bears will in fact be given their “threatened” designation, but environmental groups are prepared to appeal if the government denies the bears are in danger. In the meantime, hunters are scrambling to take the bears down while it’s still legal:

“It’s a super adrenalin rush. It’s incredible,” said Mark Beeler, a 49-year-old bow hunter from Milwaukee, Wis. “A polar bear is almost mysterious. Before this, I’d only ever seen a polar bear at the zoo.”

Let’s hear it for the educational value of zoos!

Whatever the decision may be in the States, Canada has to make its own decision on the status of polar bears. Canada has just labelled the bear a “special concern” - less serious than threatened or endangered -but stated that this is without taking global warming into consideration, a move called “weak” by the Center for Biological Diversity.

Follow along at the CBD’s web site.

The World Wildlife Fund is calling for a moratorium on polar bear hunting in the Baffin Bay area, due to the existing threats to the bear’s existence. The Nunavut government also believes that the hunt is not sustainable, based on “both Inuit knowledge and scientific work".

Northern hunters and trappers claim that the research is based on old data. If that’s the case, shouldn’t that mean there are even fewer bears than projected?

Learn more about polar bears and the WWF’s conservation efforts here. For more details on polar bear population data, you can read the reports to the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board.

“When it comes to the survival of the polar bear, the Bush administration is putting the ‘dead’ back into ‘deadline,"‘ said Rep. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who heads a House of Representatives panel on climate change.

The United States has again postponed a deadline for a decision on determining the “threatened” status of the polar bear, during which time the government has sold oil and gas rights to almost 30 million acres of land - a move said by the Interior Department to be “entirely coincidental".

Even if the US eventually lists polar bears as threatened, Canada has said it is under no obligation to follow.. However, Manitoba has already listed the bears as threatened, which will allow the province to restrict development on its Arctic shoreline.

Find out what you can do to help the polar bear at Project Thin Ice.

Greetings from Iqaluit, Nunavut

This past months work has been interesting, but not very exciting. In mid-December, the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board received a request to increase the quota on bowhead whales. The current quota is one whale every 2-3 years and the request was to up it to two for this year and then starting in 2009 increase the harvest to three per year.

To respond to such a request would generally be straightforward. We would look at the existing abundance estimate for the population of animals in question and model the effect of the increased mortality due to harvest. Unfortunately the most recent abundance estimate, which is based on surveys from 2002-2004 is not finalized yet. In 2006 the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) here in Canada present their results to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) Scientific Committee and the estimated abundance was 7309 whales.

That number represents is a major conservation success. Commercial whaling had reduced bowheads in the eastern Arctic to only a few hundred. For the most part they have been protected from hunting since the 1930s with a few being taken in subsistence and cultural hunts by Inuit of Nunavut.

There was a lot of discussion among members of the IWC Scientific Committee when DFO presented the 7309 figure. Many of the scientists were concerned with the method used for data analysis and suggested a reanalysis. So the DFO researchers went back to the lab and started their reanalysis. We were told to expect the revised results in April of 2007, but we still have not seen the final report nine months later. However DFO did present a briefing to the NWMB in response to the requested quota increase and in this briefing the abundance estimate was reported at about 14,000 whales! DFO cautioned us that these numbers are not finalized, basically meaning their upper management hasn’t accepted them yet.

With numbers like this and a clear trend of a growing population, it would be pretty tough to decline the Inuit of Nunavut one whale per year for each of the three administrative regions in the Territory. However, as you are probably aware, wildlife management is as much, if not more, about politics as it is about animals, so who knows what will end up happening. The way the process works is that the NWMB will consider all the available information either at its meeting in March or at a special meeting being held in April. They will make their decision and forward it to the Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans who can either accept, reject, or vary the decision.

Based on my analysis, Inuit harvesting three bowhead whales per year will have no negative consequences on the population. But in the year I’ve been working for the NWMB I have learned that there are no sure things so be sure to check back to find out what ends up happening.

To learn more about bowhead whales and the NWMB visit us @ www.nwmb.com

In the interests of balance and symmetry, let’s take a look at the climate situation in Antarctica for a change.

Unsurprisingly, the reports are much like what we know about the situation in the Arctic: change is happening, though it manifests itself in different ways. While in the Arctic, sea ice is declining dramatically and quickly, the Antarctic ice is increasing in some areas and decreasing in others. Atmospheric pressure has dropped, glaciers are retreating, and numbers of open-water penguin species have increased while sea-ice penguins have decreased.

The British Antarctic Survey researches the history and previous patterns of ice formation and melting in the region. Their statement from December 2007 describes the changes they have seen and discusses the importance of studying Antarctica and learning more about its environmental changes. This video shows how the team investigates beneath the ice, where two miles deep, lakes are forming and water flows freely.

What do we do next? This site has some suggestions on what you can do to save Antarctica. And the WWF has a good list for leading the good life as well.