As the Arctic continues to unravel due to human-caused climate change, we are beginning to see the regions fragile marine eco-system begin to break down.
The news and video of yet another story on the polar bear's plight to survive in a changing world, now that warming temperatures are eliminating the sea ice on which the entire food web depends for survival.
The predators have begun to visit human settlements to locate food, a disturbing new trend for them.
Due to climate change, polar bears and grizzlies are mating, the offspring are called pizzlies or grolars. Grizzlies are expected to “eat up the polar bear genetically”.
Bears sharing both species’ DNA have been recorded several times over the past decade. So why are these two species linking up?
It’s called flexible mate choice: The bears are mating with the best possible partners as opposed to not mating at all, and they’re mating because they share relatively close territories and the same branches of the same evolutionary tree.
What we’re starting to see in the Canadian Arctic is three-fourth grizzlies
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The crossbreeds found in Alaska and Canada are not genetic anomalies. Scientists have found the mix in the islands off Southeast Alaska, where bears resemble grizzlies but contain polar bear DNA. That indicates decades of sporadic interbreeding, said Steven Amstrup, chief scientist at Polar Bears International.
The polar-grizzly cocktail is also far from the only recent animal hybrid. The coywolf -- a coyote-dog-wolf amalgamation -- and a lynx-bobcat mix have been popping up along the northern Atlantic coast. The more scientists analyze species' genomes, the more they realize that animals we label as "pure breeds" actually share DNA -- and that includes us.
Amstrup has studied bears in the Arctic since the 1970s and was instrumental in helping list the polar bear as a threatened species in 2008. He, like other experts, characterizes this "new" bear relationship as more beneficial to grizzlies than polar bears. That's because there are more grizzlies than polar bears and because grizzly territory is expanding while polar bear territory is contracting. What that adds up to is a good chance grizzlies could essentially dilute the polar bear population until it doesn't exist at all, they say.
Intraspecies mixing between the two happened thousands of years ago, thanks to the advance and retreat of glaciers, and of late, it has been boosted by climate change. Scientists say it’s also probably been assisted by policies that protect both bears from culling and hunting, affording further opportunities for mingling.This is yet another shot across the bow that biosphere collapse is upon us.
Residents of a village in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula have been stunned by the sight of a polar bear prowling for food hundreds of miles from its usual habitat.
Russian media reported on Wednesday that the exhausted-looking animal apparently traveled from Chukotka to the village of Tilichiki on Kamchatka, some 700km (434 miles) south.
Environmentalists said the bear could have lost its sense of direction while drifting on an ice floe.
“Due to climate change, the Arctic is getting warmer, hunting environment gets smaller and less convenient,” said Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace. “The ice is receding, and polar bears look for new ways to survive. And the easiest way is coming to people.”
Locals were making the bear feel welcome, giving it fish, media reported.
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