Tears for Bears: Polar bear swims for 9 days searching for ice, losing her cub.
Posted January 28, 2011 in Reviving the World's Oceans
I cried when I read this BBC article yesterday. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey have outfitted polar bears in the Arctic with GPS tracking collars, discovering that they are swimming exceedingly far distances in search of disappearing sea ice. One mother bear “swam continuously for 232 hours and 687 km and through waters that were 2-6 degrees C," says research zoologist George M. Durner. She barely survived, but her yearling cub did not.
I fell asleep last night agonizing over this story. Polar bears face a growing number of threats, Arctic currents have just been reported as the warmest in 2,000 years, yet more drilling in this treacherous region is imminent, and meaningful national controls on greenhouse gases emissions are illusory in our contentious political climate. I finally rested by reflecting on the work of my colleagues at NRDC: Lisa Speer and Chuck Clusen, who work tirelessly to protect the fragile Arctic from drilling and other threats; and our teams of folks working on global warming solutions and the clean energy and climate legislation. Help for the polar bears, and the millions of people facing climate change impacts around the world, can’t come soon enough.
Wistful polar bear in the sun, courtesy of mape_s on Flickr.
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Comments
Pamela — Jan 30 2011 11:37 AM
I read most of your story. And I have seen shows where bears or other animals are in trouble. (Well, till i can stand to watch the crew film the deaths.) And I do agree: we have to do something. However, running through my head the whole time was -- what the heck was the filming crew doing besides filming the last hours of her cub's life and her own almost drowning?? I mean, its like filming a human's drowning and doing nothing else! We KNOW these bears are in trouble! What the heck are we doing about it?? Yes, they are wild. Yes, we can't get all that close. But with even ships all over the place, you would think someone would take something up where the bears are, fix it to where the bears can get access to it, and either anchor it or let it drift. (Possibly anchor it. Somewhere where the bears can get off and get food.) I mean, we drop tires in lakes for fish habitats. We make our own reefs out of concrete for coral to colonize. Why can't we make an "iceberg," if you will, for polar bears? Or "icebergs." We sink old battle ships because they are no longer viable. We probably sink garbage scows. Take them up there to use, (minus the garbage!) Or the ships -- strip them down as much as possible. Make some kind of ramps the bears can climb up.
We have scientists studying them. The bears are even collared or tagged with GPS. And the scientists just sit there, watching them drown, filming it all, saying "Well, number Whatever just bit the dust." That's unconscionable! I can't see how they can do that!
I think instead of saying "We've got to do something about this global warming," we say "What can we make for these bears to live on?"
Leila — Jan 30 2011 06:32 PM
Pamela,
These are very good points, and I have wondered exactly the same thing. I don't know exactly why rescue missions are not performed (and maybe some are), but I will try to find out.
Thank you for your concern!
~Leila
Misti — Jan 30 2011 09:39 PM
I thought that they go to the ice for hunting. Not that building artificial ice "reefs" isn't a decent idea, but it wouldn't be their ideal habitat and could possibly cause more problems? (just thinking out loud) I wish that climate change skeptics could be forced to watch this sort of thing.
c gardner — Jan 30 2011 10:04 PM
This is exactly why, even though I so want to, I have decided not to visit Alaska. We're destroying habitats due to our "need" to see the world; using up fossil fuel to get there; instead of leaving it be. I'm really thinking long and hard about travel in general any more.
Linda Whaley — Jan 30 2011 10:37 PM
OK, can we do anything as citizens? Please let us know. We MUST get the word out....I don't believe there are skeptics so much as there are those who choose to turn a blind eye and pretend this is not happening. I agree with other comments that the film crew could have done something. I don't believe in non interference across the board. We already invaded the bear's habitat. The least we could do is use our (supposedly) superior intelligence to have helped them. As for Alaska, we have too many ignorant persons living in that state, our last beautiful wilderness, and they are content to destroy it rather than save it. This must also be addressed, as the polar regions exist to an extent there.
diane clayton — Jan 30 2011 11:06 PM
why did you try to help them get back together? not just watch baby die, that is so sad. i am crying for them, wish you save them, please save them now, keep me posted i feel so bad for them
diane clayton — Jan 30 2011 11:13 PM
you don't just film them dying please help them but too late, don't make same mistake again. i feel so lousy now knowing baby died. where all ice go? what can we do to help them
Pamela Johnson — Jan 30 2011 11:48 PM
As I child I thought I would never see the day when Polar Bears were in danger. I thank you for your article and I just feel helpless. I sign petitions and pass them on but there seems no end in sight.
Felix Cooke — Jan 31 2011 03:30 AM
It's my understanding that this female and her cub were NOT filmed during this swim. The data came from a GPS collar and a temperature logger on/in the bear that were downloaded a couple months after the trek. The photo in the article was a stock photo.
Are we going to turn a few bears into media darlings or are we going to respect the whole system by using a little less fuel, stop buying plastic bottles for water, turning off the porch light at night, and rejecting chemicals such as pesticides and fire retardants that end up in the arctic via bioaccumulation? Is it right as humans to inundate the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and then pluck the last few grand polar bears from the water and toss them on a raft? Let's spare them their dignity and actually prove to them we want to co-exist.
Rowen Soto — Jan 31 2011 11:28 AM
Polar caps melting due to global warming will caused flash floods and unpredictable very strong storms and tornadoes ! Freak weather!
grrr tsss — Jan 31 2011 02:51 PM
Wouldn't it be neat if the Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be partly coagulated into sizeable plastic islands and these towed through Sarah Palin's backyard (between Russia & Alaska) up toward the North Pole?
linda siler — Jan 31 2011 08:08 PM
I want to protect the animals like everyone else does, and protect our planet, but for researchers to let an animal suffer like the momma bear is cold blooded there is a thing letting nature take it's course, but they captured her and put a tracer on her, she is now part of a research plan that is not natural, the researchers kick the public's asses, they want us to send money and protect the planet and yet they would sacrifice a bears life to make a bloody damn video, shame on them, they are cold blooded jerks
Leila — Jan 31 2011 08:44 PM
Thanks for all the comments.
To clarify: I am not a researcher, I'm a lawyer in San Francisco and I wrote this blog to share my reaction to the findings of a study performed by the United States Geological Service (USGS). USGS put collars on the bears to collect data about their movements, but it is my understanding that the researchers are very far from the bears – not following them in boats nor taking video of them – the data is gathered later from a transmittal station.
NRDC is an organization that focuses on legal and policy measures to stop the root causes of climate change that results in sea ice melt and other problems causing the strife exemplified by the bears in this study. We don’t have field staff that could go to the Arctic to do rescues.
However, I did some research, and there are a couple organizations working on Polar Bear research. This group is going to open a Polar Bear Rescue Center: http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/
We really appreciate and share your concern for the plight of polar bears and all creatures threatened by Climate Change Impacts!
Krystal — Jan 31 2011 09:02 PM
Yes, It's terrible that a yearling Polar bear cub has succumbed to exhaustion and drowned. Unfortunately in this case, technology was only able to inform us after the fact, rather than prevent it in the first place. The Barge idea mentioned in the earlier post is an outstanding real-world remedy and would have worked well. Unfortunate also as mentioned, the ones monitoring such activity did not have real-time tracking GPS systems. They were instead just collecting historical movement data. I suppose, with real-time capable GPS collars, AND monitoring, they could have notified wildlife protection Agencies much sooner, and before the bear's situation became dire, maybe even attempt a rescue. But WOULD they have notified authorities if they could? Barges? Low tech as that may sound, it's a practical, common sense approach to a problem that could still ultimately resolve itself in a few years. I remember them saying the High Sierras had seen such an accumulation of snow fall that it would NEVER fully melt back to previous levels !! I also remember 25-30 years ago in Florida, orange growers worried about loosing their orchards because the temperature in Miami was 20 degrees. After the report, with video of smudge pots blazing among the trees, the weatherman reported as an aside, "BTW, it's currently 26 degrees in Anchorage !! A couple of well placed garbage scows would have come in handy. But it would not have fueled agenda promoting articles such as this one. Ingenuity is the key in so many of these types of situations; but it seems sometimes like someone is changing the locks on us.
Sadly, without a huge U.N. approved, funding (read that: American contribution that will promptly be misappropriated and never reach it's goal, multinational, agenda driven, wealth distributing, Global economy depleting, maybe even some Global 2000 population control measures thrown in) program, that will certainly take forever in committee to adopt, nothing will probably ever be done to improve the Polar bear's plight, because it's not about the Polar bear.
"IF" climate change has a REAL human affect, and "IF" the phenomenon persists, and even "IF" the effects are produced as advertised. I still do not self-flagellate because "we" did not join Kyoto when it probably would only buy us an extra 6 years (maybe) by 2100 anyway, even by implementing (WORLDWIDE not just here in the U.S. mind you) the most stringent of emissions protocols imaginable. We are talking about something that is much, much slower than "watching the grass grow" here folks. This is right up there with nail biting about the sun burning out eventually. I just hate wasting time and throwing good money after bad.
The "junk science", computer modeled, data sets used to foment this "Agenda of Fear" that is “Climate Change” have been debunked.
see this from 2009:
"http://www.climatedepot.com/a/2769/Not-Again-Media-Promoting-Arctic-Hockey-Stick--Claim-Temps-Warmest-in-2000-Years--But-Scientists-Already-Rebuking-Study"
I guess some just need reminding, and those findings republished from time to time with the additional "new" refutations that are readily available from peer reviewed sources. Not those stemming from biased proponents of "pseudo-science" at best, or at worst, the ones with occult agendas.
Meanwhile, we just can't seem get enough people fired up to do something about pressing issues that need dealing with RIGHT NOW like the endangered Dolphins that are being slaughtered in Taijii, Japan. Why care? Porpoise is sold on the market as "whale" meat. Some is even given to the Japanese school system, with the full knowledge of the government. The government also knows the meat contains toxic levels of mercury !! http://www.thecovemovie.com/
Honey Bee colonies are being decimated by KNOWN pesticides (a phenomenon known as so-called "colony collapse disorder" or CCD. For more, see http://www.vanishingofthebees.com ) all over the Globe, except for where they are banned by Governments with the Gonads to say "NO" to the huge chemical conglomerates responsible for the production of these poisons. They are seeing a comeback of bee hives in spite of the fact that the environments where the pesticides have been used, remain at toxic levels for years afterwards. The EPA is already indicted according to their own scientists, and we may soon learn of an even more insidious, systemic, disregard for our food supply involving the USDA, FDA, and other agencies as well. Colony Collapse Disorder Is a Myth. Neurotoxic Pesticide Causes Bee Deaths.The proof that a neurotoxic pesticide causes bee die-offs has existed for two years, but the researcher hasn't been able to get it published !! http://www.gaia-health.com/articles351/000389-ccd-myth-pesticide-causes-bee-deaths.shtml .
Felix Cooke — Feb 1 2011 12:34 AM
As a biologist, I'd like to ask folks demanding a 'rescue' to consider how that would be done. First, a pile of money would have to fall out of thin air to pay for the operation. If the bear is traversing hundreds of miles, then they would need a boat to provide support and fuel. How long would that take to get into place in the Beaufort Sea? Once the helicopter reached the animal... uh... ? Polar bear biologists don't dart animals in the water. Once the capture drugs begin to work, the animal would drop its head into the water and drown. Add to this scenario the likelihood that the biologists probably receive the data from the GPS collar via satellites in a weekly email), so by the time this bear drowns the cub had died days prior. Few care for wildlife more than biologists - afterall, they've dedicated their careers and are usually paid little for extremely difficult work. Once they capture and collar an animal it's their responsibility to make the most of the data, but they can't be expected to rescue them or protect them from all harm (jump in front of a hunter's bullet? feed them?). If you appreciate nature, please appreciate what is natural.
Mary Hall — Feb 2 2011 06:48 PM
I remember from 35 years ago the effort to save the harp seal pups when I was a teenager..it's still going on. The battle to save whales and dolphins from slaughter continues. But now the outcry is even more organized. I thank all the researchers out there who bring the public the news so we can realize the urgency. Isn't science about observing? In the end that information will save polar bears. Everyone who is upset has empathy, other people don't. Remember the bison herds, remember the passenger pigeons. Every industry and corporation should hire a percentage of people with a high level of empathy....and I bet that mother bear doesn't lose her next cub!
Richard Tennassee — Feb 4 2011 08:18 AM
We all need to start taking extreme action right now to prevent major issues like this from happening. Joining is 50%, going out there and being part of the action to protect, and prevent these wonderful creatures from being extinct is 100%. I'm a male, thats 28 years old, and I will join the action to save these animals from danger, like they are my children. (MORE PEOPLE ARE NEEDED IN THIS CRITICAL TIMES FOR THE WILD LIFE) I will be there Navy Seals to protect the Wild Life like the Polar Bears, and Wolves etc...