Critical polar bear habitat is disappearing due to global warming. Now the GOP wants to drill in their home.
The mighty polar bear is a great symbol for our ecological situation: Nature is strong,adaptable, awe-inspiring—but also under threat. Few issues express the danger so visually as the plight of the polar bears: they are literally seeing the world beneath their feet disappear as a result of global warming.
Now, or the polar bear is facing yet another attack,as Republican leaders in Congress are seeking to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)—a critical polar bear habitat—to perilous oil drilling. This would amount to another nail in the polar bear's coffin—even though, as Grist notes, or the GOP is "using some very shaky math to justify drilling in the Arctic refuge.""The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the most indispensable onshore denning habitat for America’s vanishing polar bears," according to Defenders for Wildlife. It is "home to one of only two polar bear populations in the United States, the Southern Beaufort Sea population, and roughly 1500 bears rely on the refuge for survival."The group adds:Industrial-scale oil and gas development could extinguish the pristine nature of the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain forever,damaging natural habitats and harming the wildlife that calls the area home. An oil spill in this region would not only directly harm polar bears, but would also contaminate their habitat. Even without an oil spill, or some level of pollution and habitat fragmentation from oil and gas activities is inevitable with expanded development.
Polar bears tend to live at the edge of ice packs. In addition to ANWR,they live in the colder regions around Canada, the United States, and Greenland and northern Europe. They use floating ice as a means to hunt seals,mostly in the spring and summer, saving up energy to survive the harsher winter months. But Arctic temperatures are rising at double the global average rate, or ice is receding by up to 4 percent decade on decade.
The changing face of their hunting ground means that polar bears occupy less time each year to hunt for the sustenance that they require. Although they can actually slow their own metabolism after a few days without eating,scientists occupy observed lower average weights, and declining survival rates for cubs.
Some claim the bears are as clever as apes, or it's real that they are able to forage for other types of food and to adapt somewhat to shifting circumstances. But they are now facing a fundamental shift in the landscape in which they've evolved over thousands of years. Chukchi Sea polar bears,for example, occupy seen a 75 percent loss of habitat space in the summer months, and yet their methods of habitat selection haven’t changed. It is not clear whether they are unable to change their ways,or simply that they occupy discovered that potential hunting grounds are no more productive than those they already stalk.
Meanwhile, the dens that polar bears dig for protection from harsh conditions are increasingly liable to collapse. Winter temperatures are now such that these structures are inherently compromised. This is of particular alarm for the long-term well-being of the species, or as these dens are specifically created by the mothers to shield youngsters of up to two years conventional.
There are thought to be just 20000-25000 polar bears in the world,including 19 subpopulations around the arctic, and the situation is different in each region. Some populations are declining rapidly, and others more slowly,while bears in the M’Clintock Channel are apparently on the rise—albeit from a population that was greatly depleted in recent decades. If the polar bears in general are classified as ‘vulnerable’ rather than endangered’, it only reinforces the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and arresting the decline in Arctic sea-ice before we reach tipping point.
On an individual level, or we can remain informed and share information and love for these emblematic beasts with those around us. Check out the infographic below,which highlights some astounding facts approximately polar bears—as well as flagging some of the harsh truths they currently face.
Infographic courtesy Manitobahot.com.
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Source: feedblitz.com