#climate change – @wildlifewednesdays on Tumblr

www.worldwildlife.org

One Arctic town's very busy polar bear patrol

Recent news have reported that a Russian town had to declare a state of emergency as large numbers of polar bears invaded the town in search of food. As ice melts and it becomes harder for bears to find food, human-bear conflict is becoming more and more frequent. here’s the story of such conflicts on Greenland.

Living with polar bears

Dine steps outside the incineration plant early in the morning to smoke a cigarette. Flicking on his lighter, he finds himself looking into the eyes of a polar bear standing by his ATV four meters away. The bear moves straight towards him. Dine races for the corner of the building, and fortunately, the bear chooses to move in another direction.

Mikkel, who works at the weather station, goes to launch a weather balloon at 22:00. As he walks towards the building, he hears the ice crunch behind him. He turns around and sees a polar bear three meters away. He runs inside, and the polar bear takes off down the slope at the dump and swims towards Storesten.

The hard work of the polar bear patrol

Throughout the Arctic, conflicts between polar bears and humans have risen as summer sea ice shrinks due to climate change. In some areas, bears are now forced to stay on land for longer periods than before. In their search for food, they are often attracted to nearby villages.

In Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland, the problem is particularly severe as a deluge of bears created life-threatening situations for both bears and the villagers.

In 2007, nine polar bear conflicts were registered in all of Greenland. By 2017, there were 21 conflicts between August and December in Ittoqqortoormiit alone. In almost all of the 21 cases, the local polar bear patrol was called to ensure that the bears were scared away from the community and kept under observation.

WWF provided support for the community to establish a polar bear patrol in 2015 to protect the town's 450 residents from dangerous encounters on their way to school or work, and to reduce the number of bears killed in self-defense. During peak polar bear season in autumn, the patrol is particularly active just before school opens each morning.

“The community members tell us that the patrol gives them greater peace of mind, and we prevent a lot of polar bears from being shot in self-defense”, says Bo Øksnebjerg, Secretary-General of WWF-Denmark. “So on the one hand, we’re glad that the polar bear patrol is working so well. On the other hand, we regret that the patrol is so busy. Everything indicates that the problem of hungry polar bears in communities will continue to grow as the sea ice shrinks.”

WWF supports similar polar bear patrol projects in Alaska and Russia. These community projects aim to prevent unintended and potentially fatal encounters between polar bears and people, keeping both towns and bears safe. Deterrence tools such as noisemakers as well as better lighting near public places, bear-proof food storage containers, and warning plans for when bears enter communities are further effective means of protection.

The village of Wales, Alaska—the westernmost town in mainland North America— started a polar bear patrol in 2016. Now, they are embarking on an expedition to six other villages in the region to tell their story, listen to the concerns of other villages, and see if a polar bear conflict avoidance/deterrence program might be a good fit for them. WWF has committed to helping two additional Alaskan villages initiate polar bear patrol programs in 2019.

#polar bear #climate change #articles #bears #wildlife conflict #russia #greenland #wwf

wildlifewednesdays reblogged

speculative-evolution

fumblebeefae

Hot dogs!: High ambient temperatures impact reproductive success in African Wild Dogs

Rosie Woodroffe, Rosemary Groom and J. Weldon McNutt

www.sciencedaily.com

Recent research on Lycaon pictus, one of the first studies on how shifting temperatures due to climate change are impacting tropical species, suggests that climate change may be harming the future of the endangered African Wild Dog. Causing the increase of mortality rates in pups

“ Across three sites, wild dog packs produced consistently fewer surviving pups when they raised pups in hot weather”

And raising temperatures making it too hot for the dogs to hunt:

“ On hotter days, wild dogs are less active, especially during the denning period when they are raising small pups “

“Wild dogs are crepuscular, hunting mostly by daylight, in the cool of the morning and evening”

As well as temperatures predicted to rise across South Africa, through key wild dog sites.

“Den-season temperatures are projected to rise across southern Africa, meaning that some key wild dog sites may become too hot to breed”

[Link to abstract here] [ Link to full paper here ] [Link to Rosie Woodroffe twitter]

#wild african dog #article #climate change #conservation

wildlifewednesdays

4 Ways Polar Bears Are Dealing With Climate Change

It's a tough time to be a polar bear.

The Arctic predators—which depend on constantly diminishing amounts of sea ice to catch marine mammals such as seals—are declining in number, and fast.(...)

Putting Leftovers on Ice

When a research team in Svalbard, a group of islands in the Norwegian Arctic, recently observed a starving polar bear eating a dolphin and burying the leftovers in the snow to save for later, it was surprising on a lot of levels.

For one thing, polar bears generally prefer to eat seals. What's more, scientists had never observed the predators eating this species of dolphin. And though other bear species, such as grizzlies, store food for later, sticking leftovers into what amounts to a refrigerator is unusual behavior for polar bears.

Here's what likely happened: The dolphins swam into Svalbard while it was ice-free—also unusual, since that area is normally frozen year-round. When ice packed into the area later in the year, the dolphins were trapped and fell prey to the polar bear.

These ice entrapments are a short-term boon for the bears, giving them an easy source of fatty food they can just scoop out of a hole in the ice.

But Peter Ewins, leader of Arctic conservation for the conservation group WWF, says it doesn't mean Norwegian polar bears will be just fine.

“In the long term, the populations of these species of food for the polar bears are going to decline,” he says. “So it’s not going to be a persisting source of high fat for the polar bears.”

Surf and Turf on the Menu

Each year, snow geese come to Canada to breed. Females typically lay four eggs to a clutch. While they were once endangered in the United States, the species has rebounded—which is lucky for polar bears.

In a 2011 study published in the journal Oikos, vertebrate zoologist Robert Rockwell found that these eggs provide a backup food source for the polar bears. Downing one of these eggs is like "eating a stick of butter," Rockwell said in an interview at the time. (Also see "Polar Bears Turning to Goose Eggs to Survive Warming?")

While Rockwell estimates that 88 snow goose eggs are about the caloric equivalent of a seal, WWF’s Ewins likens it to eating granola once a day for the summer, and expecting it to sustain you for the next six months.

“A few specialist polar bears might be able to eke out a living on a mixture of seaweed, and fish, and whale carcasses that happen to be around” —and, clearly, goose eggs—”but eating those kinds of things doesn’t sustain anything like the current population levels,” Ewins says.

Karyn Rode, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage, Alaska, agrees a few lucky bears could benefit from foods such as goose eggs.

But Rode, leader of an April study in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment on the topic, cautions these opportunistic meals won't help the species as a whole survive.

Walking Hibernation? Not So Much

Rising global temperatures and Arctic ice’s natural variability have led tolonger annual ice melts in the summer, and incomplete re-freezes in the winter. This makes it harder for the polar bears to find food, since they depend on ice sheets to hunt seals that also use them for rearing pups.

“We’re seeing a greater proportion of bears come on shore in the summertime during the sea ice minimum, and they’re spending longer times there,” Rode says.

Some researchers had thought that the polar bears used an active hibernation strategy to conserve energy during lean summer months, when some of them swim ashore.

But a study published in July in the journal Science calls that theory into question: The activity trackers the researchers put on the polar bears revealed that the bears didn’t actually slow their metabolic rates beyond the natural slowing caused by starvation.

Eating People Food

Polar bears are "very opportunistic eaters,” Rode says. “They’ll eat anything, and sometimes to their detriment.”

That includes the food and waste that people store in their towns. (See "As Sea Ice Shrinks, Can Polar Bears Survive on Land?")

In 2014, the town of Arviat in Nunavut Territory, Canada, had to cancel regular trick- or-treating and hold Halloween indoors due to concerns that children wandering outside would be at risk of a polar bear attack.

To reduce polar bear's temptations in Arviat, WWF has been handing out bear-proof metal bins to store food. The nonprofit also hired a polar bear monitor, who uses spotlights and bear bangers—a type of instrument that makes a loud noise—to discourage the bears.

Ewins says that polar bears are going to have to keep adapting as they forage for food.

Until climate change is a little more under control, "it’s going to be a few more decades of these problems for animals that are dependent on ice,” he says.

“We’re trying to help polar bears and local people survive through that transition.”

#polar bear #bears #conservation #climate change #articles #animals #wildlife #zoology