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Most polar bears could be lost by 2050

(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-09-09 14:14

WASHINGTON - Two-thirds of the world's polar bear population could be
gone by midcentury if predictions of melting sea ice hold true, the US
Geological Survey reported on Friday.

An Arctic polar bear jumps as it crosses ice floes at Herald Island in
the Chukchi Sea, July 27, 1999. Two-thirds of the world's current polar
bear population could be gone by midcentury if predictions of melting sea
ice hold true,the US Geological Survey reported on Friday.[Reuters]?

The fate of polar bears could be even bleaker than that estimate, because
sea ice in the Arctic might be vanishing faster than the available
computer models predict, the geological survey said in a report aimed at
determining whether the big white bear should be listed as a threatened
species.

"There is a definite link between changes in the sea ice and the welfare
of polar bears," said Steve Amstrup, who led the research team. Arctic
sea ice is already at an all-time low this year and is expected to
retreat farther this month, according to the US National Snow and Ice
Data Center.

That means that polar bears -- some 16,000 of them -- will disappear by
2050 from parts of the Arctic where sea ice is melting most rapidly,
along the north coasts of Alaska and Russia, researchers said in a
telephone briefing.

Other polar bear populations could survive beyond that date but many of
those could be gone by 2100, Amstrup said. By century's end, the only
polar bears left might live in the Canadian Arctic islands and along the
west coast of Greenland.

"Projected changes in future sea ice conditions, if realized, will result
in loss of approximately two-thirds of the world's current polar bear
population by the mid 21st century," the report's executive summary said.

"Because the observed trajectory of Arctic sea ice decline appears to be
underestimated by currently available models, this assessment of future
polar bear status may be conservative."

ARE POLAR BEARS 'THREATENED'?

In January, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing the polar
bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, noting
polar bears depended on sea ice as a platform to hunt seals, their main
prey.

The research released on Friday was sent to the Fish and Wildlife
Service. A decision on the bears' status is expected in January.

Without enough sea ice, polar bears would be forced onto land, but they
are inefficient hunters once they get out of the water and ice, the
researchers said. The bears' disappearance would probably take place as
young cubs failed to survive to adulthood and females were unable to
reproduce successfully.

The first polar bears probably first appeared about 40,000 to 50,000
years ago, and the species has not lived through a period as warm as the
one predicted by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the
scientists said.

In a series of reports this year, the UN climate panel said with 90
percent probability that global climate change was occurring and that
human activities contributed to it. The emission of greenhouse gases --
including carbon dioxide from petroleum-fueled vehicles and coal-fired
power plants -- is the prime human cause of this warming trend, the panel
said.

Global warming was an important topic of discussions of the Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation forum this week in Australia and will be the subject
of a special UN meeting later this month.

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