The Guardian has the story on the “delayed formation of sea ice” in the Arctic this Fall has frightened biologists enough to issue the first “extirpation event” or the local extinction of a species (in this case polar bears) that ceases to exist in its current range (though the population exists elsewhere, ie: zoos, Hudson Bay, Greenland).
This local extinction of polar bears is happening faster than expected because pregnant females are unable to den due to exhaustion from swimming toward sea ice that no longer exists.
The report focuses on the Norwegian archipelago, Svalbard. “The waters around Svalbard, an archipelago between Norway and the North Pole, have a little over half the average area of ice for this time of year”.
October also saw a huge departure from previous trends, particularly in the Barents Sea, which had freakishly warm weather in February and August. Scientists say these shifts, which are caused by the manmade heating of the globe, are disrupting the behaviour of species that depend on thick winter ice, such as narwhals, seals, belugas and polar bears.
“We’re restructuring a whole ecosystem. Sea ice is to the Arctic what soil is to the forest. Without sea ice we’ll still have an ecosystem but it won’t include polar bears & many other species,” tweeted the scientist Andrew Derocher, who has studied the bears for 35 years.
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Because of the delay in ice formation, bears have to wait longer to hunt for seals, which means they are missing out on an autumn feeding season that is important for them to build up fat.
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The most immediate concern is for pregnant females, who normally travel across the ice at this time to make maternity dens on Hopen and other islands that are important for reproduction, said Jon Aars of the Norwegian Polar Institute.
“Unless sea ice forms within the next few weeks, pregnant females will have to swim,” he said, noting this uses five times as much energy and runs down fat reserves that are important for producing milk and raising cubs.
Watts provided a link that it is expected that the Arctic will have no sea ice by 2040.
Polar bears are shown scavenging on the carcass of a dead bowhead whale that washed ashore on Wrangel Island, Russia.A new study led by the University of Washington found that although dead whales are still valuable sources of fat and protein for some polar bears, this resource will likely not be enough to sustain most bear populations in the future when the Arctic becomes ice-free in summers, which is likely to occur by 2040 due to climate change. The results were published online Oct. 9 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.