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As Earth warms, polar bears vanishing
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RISING temperatures that melt sea ice in the Arctic will probably reduce the polar bear population by a third over the next few decades, and the same warming trend is likely to worsen the decline of wild reindeer, scientists said yesterday.
The new findings by university and government researchers were presented as part of a panel discussion about climate impacts on wildlife during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
The polar bear research is drawn from new satellite data documenting a loss of Arctic sea ice — the animal’s chief habitat — from 1979 to 2015, and forming the basis of projections in further declines of both ice and bears over the coming decades.
Polar bears number about 26,000.
But their population is expected to diminish by 8,600 over the next 35 to 40 years, the scientists said. At the time polar bears were declared a threatened species in 2008, one study predicted they could vanish from two-thirds of their native range by mid-century.
The latest data better quantifies such an outcome.
“There is the potential for a large reduction in the global population of polar bears over the next three generations if the sea ice loss continues at the rate we’ve seen it,” said Kristin Laidre, a marine mammal ecologist at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center.
Polar bears, standing as tall as 3.35 meters and weighing up to 635 kilograms, use floating sea ice as platforms for everything from mating and rearing their young to hunting their preferred prey of ringed seals.
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