These polar bears can survive with less sea ice – Forbes India

A photo provided by Thomas W. Johansen/NASA shows a polar bear atop a piece of floating glacial ice in a fjord in southeast Greenland in 2016. The global threat to animals from climate change remains, but a new discovery suggests that small numbers may survive longer as the Arctic warms. (Thomas W. Johansen/NASA via The New York Times)

SScientists have identified a distinct subpopulation of polar bears in southeast Greenland which, in an area with little sea ice, survives by hunting ice that breaks off glaciers.

The discovery suggests a means by which a small number of bears could survive as warming continues and more of the sea ice they normally rely on disappears. But researchers and other polar experts have warned that serious risks to the overall population of polar bears in the Arctic remain and will only be mitigated by reducing greenhouse gas emissions to curb global warming.

The subpopulation, believed to number several hundred animals, was identified during a multi-year survey of what was thought to be a single population of bears along the entire 1-mile-long east coast of Greenland. 800 miles. Through analysis of satellite-tracked movements, tissue samples, and other data, bears in the southeast have been shown to be isolated, both physically and genetically, from others.

“It was a completely unexpected finding,” said Kristin Laidre, a biologist at the University of Washington who has studied the ecology of marine mammals in Greenland for two decades. Laidre is the senior author of an article on the subpopulation published Thursday in the journal Science.

Southeast Greenland is particularly isolated, with narrow fjords hemmed in by steep mountains. At the inland end, there are often glaciers that end in water; at the other end is the open ocean, with a strong current flowing south. “These bears are very isolated geographically,” Laidre said. “They’ve really evolved into residents because that’s the only way to live there.” Researchers have estimated that this subpopulation has been isolated for at least several hundred years.

Overall, there are around 26,000 polar bears around the Arctic, in 19 officially designated subpopulations. The animals live on seasonal sea ice, hunting their main prey, seals, as seals bask on the ice or seek air through breathing holes. But rapid Arctic warming linked to human-made greenhouse gas emissions has reduced the extent and duration of sea ice cover.

Read also : Climate change: the window is closing for action

Some subpopulations, including one in the southern Beaufort Sea off Alaska and Canada, are already in decline because the ice doesn’t persist long enough for bears to hunt enough food for themselves. and their offspring. Polar bear experts say that if the world continues to warm, polar bears could all but disappear by the end of the century.

Southeast Greenland is relatively warm and the fjords there have less sea ice than many other areas where polar bears live – on average, about 100 days a year with enough ice for them to live and hunt .

“We know that’s too little for a polar bear to survive,” Laidre said. These are the kinds of conditions that could become widespread elsewhere in the Arctic at the end of this century.

Laidre and his colleagues found that bears in southeast Greenland hunt on sea ice when it is present. But when it’s gone, the bears have another ice to hunt: the freshwater ice that breaks off the glaciers in the fjords, in the form of icebergs and smaller and smaller pieces, and which persists most of the year.

Bears hunt from this floating mix of ice, called glacial mix, the same way they hunt from pack ice. “It gives them an extra, unusual ice shelf that bears don’t have in many other places,” Laidre said, allowing them to catch enough seals for them and their offspring to survive and thrive.

But habitats like this are rare, said Twila Moon, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, who analyzed sea ice and glacial ice cover in the fjords as part of the research. .

“There are limited places in the Arctic where we see substantial and consistent production of glacial mixing,” Moon said. In addition to parts of Greenland, the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard has glaciers that end in water.

Also: Why philanthropy must include a climate lens

So while these particular conditions may allow some bears to survive as sea ice continues to shrink, overall the animals will continue to be threatened by climate change.

“We expect to see large declines in polar bears in the Arctic under current warming trajectories,” Laidre said. “And this study doesn’t change that.”

Steven Amstrup, chief scientist of conservation group Polar Bears International, who was not involved in the research, said the study was “really thorough” and “points to a very low-key group of bears”.

Whether this is an official 20th subpopulation is up to a panel of experts to decide, under the auspices of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

©2019 New York Times News Service