Copenhagen Climate Summit

Leaders and passersby of the Copenhagen Climate Summit would be hard pressed not to notice the growing crowd around a large, bronze, ice-covered polar bear skeleton melting under the elements. The Summit brought together more than 115 world leaders to discuss our earths changing climate, and the animals like polar bears who are already paying the price. While hundreds of topics were brought up and hashed out, the list was reduced to a few hard-to-ignore topics which leaders could then discuss in greater detail. The list includes the Kyoto Protocol, the possibility of a climate treaty, climate finance sources, emissions reduction, and deforestation. For the full list and details check out this great story from the UK Guardian.



Now, back to the polar bear sculpture itself. As soon as the sculpture was erected I was watching the live stream and getting teary-eyed at its awe inspiring symbolism. Yes, there was a live stream set up 24/7 so that interested patrons from all over the world could literally watch the polar melt little by little. The sculptures creator, Mark Coreth was first inspired to create the bear skeleton and its icy fur after an eye opening trip to a Northern Canadian island where he witnessed and learned about melting arctic climates. Several prominent figures publicized the sculpture, most notably British actor Stephen Fry who was eloquently quoted saying "Polar bears and their habitat should be meltingly beautiful, not melting away,"

Read more about the Ice Bear and Copenhagen Climate Summit here, and here.

Breathing Room for the Bear

I love this New York Times piece from yesterday! It discusses the Obama administrations proposal to set aside 200,000 square miles of Alaskan waters for the polar bears. Loving the positive polar bear views coming from Washington lately. Read more below.

The Obama administration’s proposed designation of 200,000 square miles of Alaskan waters and sea ice as critical habitat for the polar bear is not just encouraging news for the bear. It signals a more sympathetic attitude toward endangered species, and is further evidence that the secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, will take a more measured approach than the Bush administration to oil and gas drilling in the Arctic.

After much prodding by the courts and its own scientists, the Bush administration listed the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in May 2008. But it deferred the required designation of protected habitat — the area deemed essential to the survival of a threatened or endangered species — partly because doing so could have torpedoed its grand plansto open millions of acres of prime polar bear territory in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas to oil and gas exploration.

Mr. Salazar is now reviewing those plans. Though a pre-existing Shell Oil lease in the Beaufort will be allowed to go forward, it seems highly unlikely that Mr. Salazar would authorize major oil and gas development in territory that his own Fish and Wildlife Service has identified as crucial to the bears’ future.

The designation of critical habitat does not automatically bar commercial activities like oil and gas drilling. It does mean that such activities, if they occur on federal land or require a federal permit, cannot go forward without intensive review by agencies like the Fish and Wildlife Service, which can limit them or prohibit them.

The biggest threat to the bears is, of course, the gradual disappearance of the sea ice where it lives and hunts, which in turn is linked to global warming. The Endangered Species Act is not designed to solve the problem of climate change, a global problem. It can relieve an already-burdened animal of the added stresses that widespread drilling would surely bring.

Good news atop a sad note: US to seek tougher protections for polar bear

The United States Interior Department filed an official proposal asking other countries to support a ban on the commercial trade of polar bears, and more strictly enforce any legal polar bear hunting. The proposal will need a lot of push to become fully accepted, as polar bear protection is often controversial due to their spot as the first species to become endangered for the reason of global warming.

The trade market for polar bear parts and furs has reportedly increased since the 1990's. These stats, paired with an animal at risk of extinction gives significant reason to put forward a ban.


If voted in, the proposal would also update protections put into effect in the 70's by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) which required permits to export any polar bear or its parts. Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife said "While we cannot stop the impacts of global warming on polar bears immediately, one thing we can do is quickly address other threats which are heightening the bear's problems, such as the commercial trade. By increasing protections for polar bears under CITES, we can start to give the polar bear some more protections while we take the necessary steps to address global warming," The proposal will be voted on by a total of 175 Nations this upcoming March, which offers a considerable period of time to build steam on either side.

Read more about this proposal at HSUS.org and Defenders.org and I will be sure to update on how you can help.

As the Ice Shrinks, So do the Bears

I was overwhelmed with sadness today when I read about the latest discovery about polar bears- they are getting smaller. A comprehensive study done on 300 polar bear skulls, comparing skulls from the early 20th century to from more recent skulls show they have changed in both size and shape.



Cino Pertoldi, a professor of Biology and lead scientist of the study, states "Because the ice is melting, the bears have to use much more energy to hunt their prey... Imagine you have two twins - one is well fed during its growth and one is starving. (The starving) one will be much smaller, because it will not have enough energy to allocate to growth."



While this news is devastating it is still, in a way, good news. Every shred of evidence we find to help prove that the effects of global warming are killing wildlife and the planet is another shred to push lawmakers to do something about it. Christian Sonne, a veterinary scientist who worked with the team, said that the samples have provided them with an entire century of evolutional development for polar bears., making them a "fantastic sample". Sonne goes on to say "Polar bears are one of the most polluted mammals on the globe."

Which reminds me. Have you signed this petition, from savethepolarbear.org? If not, do it!

And to read more about the study on shrinking polar bears, read this article from the BBC.

Would you drink polar bear tears?

When I first read about the marketing campaign Tappening by former members of the advertising industry a few weeks ago, I was excited. Now that I've seen their campaign ads, I am even more excited. They try to raise awareness about the importance of conserving water, and encourage you to drink tap, or filter your own tap water, as opposed to drinking bottled water.

They have created several "ads" (some of which have semi-lies to express how the marketing and advertising industry stretch the truth of their products to get them sold) which express their objective. As we all know, bottled water is taken from fresh-water springs or glaciers to insure fresher taste, whilst stealing arctic habitats from under the feet of those wildlife living there (or destroying ecosystems with invasive machinery, disposed water bottles, etc...).

It is interesting to note that they created a couple of ads targeted at presidential candidates Barack Obama and John Mccain, saying they had a "drinking problem", which was of course bottled water. After winning the election, they published a congratulatory ad to Obama, as well as a sincere thank you for taking up their challenge and switching to tap.

See my (obvious) favorite ad of theirs, below.



Here are a couple more:





Read more about Tappening and how they got started, here.

Knut Is In, Palin Is Out!

See, I told you I'd be back soon.

So as I said, Knut the Polar Bear from Germany, who has recently been facing a custody battle of sorts, has now been deemed his permanent home. Knut became famous in 2006 when his mother rejected him as a cub. The custody battle started when an animal park in Neumuenster, Germany, sued the Berlin zoo for increased profits from Knut, since they own Knuts father. Luckily, Berlin was able to settle with the park by offering 430,000 Euro, more than the going rate for a polar bear. Congrats to the always adorable Knut for finding his home!


We do not side-step issues that get too political here at savesomebears, so this next story is about one miss Sarah Palin herself. When fresh on the presidential campaign scene, I did some political research on her. I try to keep an open mind when it comes to politics- although I certainly lean quite far to the left, I like to know more about a candidate before disliking them based on their political affiliation. Well, unfortunately one of the first things I saw about Palin was that she had a track history with polar bears, and it wasn't good. In fact, she even advocated making it legal to shoot polar bears (and wolves) in Alaska and fought against measures to protect their habitats. So, I thought it only appropriate to link to a great article I read titled "Alaskan Wolves and Wildlife Rejoice- Palin's Out!", which you can read here.



That's all for today, more next week!

Old News!?

Yes, the polar bear blog has been on hiatus for just a few days, but I assure you now that my vacation period is over, the hiatus will be too! SO I have some "old news" that I grabbed up a couple of weeks ago, but luckily has not lost its meaning whatsoever.

First off:

The more we know about polar bears, the more hard evidence we have to protect them. There have been many ways to track wild animals over the years, and for many species easy and painless solutions have been found. But polar bears, being fairly dangerous to tag in person, have generally been tracked by plane and taken down with tranquilizers from the air. While this method does not harm the bears in the long run, I can't help but think that it is a less than pleasant experience, and have always wished there were some less invasive, more humane way. Well- looks like all my wishing paid off!

Canadian scientists have found a new harmless and painless way to both track and research polar bears and their habits. The device, although ultimately more complicated, traps hair from the polar bear and the hair samples are then used to determine DNA, sex, etc...

You can read the entire article on the Science Daily News, here

Another happy piece of polar news is Russia's decision to protect a key arctic habitat, home to polar bears, reindeer, and walrus alike! As you can see from the map below, one of the worst areas of arctic ice melt is within Russian borders. In a Panda.org article, it is made clear that the decision did not come out of nowhere, and many prominent groups such as the WWF have been lobbying to have the area protected for quite some time. My favorite quote from the piece is from Neil Hamilton, director of the WWF International’s Arctic Programme- “This is exactly the sort of thing we need to see from Arctic governments,” he said. I agree. If all arctic governments made similar decisions, imagine what large steps we could take towards conserving these precious habitats!

Well that is it for today, but I will be discussing everyones favorite polar bear cub, Knut, and his custody battle soon, as well as some other great polar bears news!

Grin And Bear It

This is a great article I read about a former polar bear keeper at the Calgary zoo, in the Calgary Herald. She did a study on bear behavior, due to the odd depression-like behavior of one of her polar bears in the 90s, and has been studying such behavior ever since. I think studies like this are so important, there is not nearly enough studies being done on things like animal emotions. She discusses polar bear depression and "polar bear prozac", definitely worth a read. Perhaps the more scientific research we can compile on how much these guys FEEL, the more world governments will be inclined to care for their potentially nonexistent futures.

Grin and Bear It

Another good arctic-related story I read was a blog on Reuters about the UN climate talks starting in Bonn and the colorful protests commencing outside. I agree with the blogger, the cactus is my favorite.

Polar Bears and a Cactus Urge Climate Action in Bonn

Is the Obama Administration Forgetting the Bears?

Although this is a story that really started about a week and a half ago, it is still just as relevant today. You may or may not have been aware of a Bush-era rule saying that although Polar Bears were protected under the endangered species act, this could not be used as a reason to restrict emissions of greenhouse gases. In short, you can't shoot em', but go ahead and drowned em'.

Well, May 8th of this year the same rule was put before the Obama administration to uphold or overturn. Unfortunately for reasons unknown to me, they (secretary Salazar in particular) decided to uphold this particularly cruel Bush administration rule. Read more about this report here, here and here.

To take action against this ruling, you can Sign THIS petition at savethepolarbear.org

Pass this around, because these guys are not going to save themselves.

Polar bear peace!

Adrienne

P.S: Picture via NewsMiner, if you are in Alaska check out this art show!

Can a sad polar bear make you turn off the lights?

Hello all! Today I have an interesting article I saw in the Boston Globe from a few days ago. Apparently, a couple of schools are using energy meters in their dorms to measure how much energy the students are conserving. However, instead of a normal meter, they use a "polar bear" meter. The system is called TellEmotion and is meant to make an emotional connection with energy conservation. When the students are conserving well, the polar bear slumbers and smiles. However, when they are leaving the lights on or not conserving well, the ice beneath the bears paws will begin to melt, the polar bear frowns and will eventually fall in to the water flailing to stay afloat. Is this too much? Well, I thought about it, and I'd say NO. It's about time real students are seeing real, albeit digitized, examples of what not conserving resources can do. You can read the full post about this silly and brilliant system here, as well as who made it and why.

Alaska

A fun post today! Since I did a post on Alaskan polar bears yesterday, I thought it would only be appropriate to do todays post on a movie that influenced my very first adoration for Polar Bears. I first saw this movie at a school movie night, sitting on the ground of my schools cafeteria in the 3rd grade. It is called, and appropriately so, "Alaska". I re-watched this movie with my partner recently and fell back in love with it.

The story is based around the family in the movie, but has a very strong undertone of protecting local ecosystems and the horror of illegal poaching (there is a very sad polar bear poaching scene, so fyi in advance for that). The main polar bear in the movie is a small adorable cub (Whom they name "Cubby") who follows two kids on their adventure to save their father who has crashed his plane in the wilderness of Alaska. It is a great film that the whole family can enjoy and learn from! Below is the trailer.

Alaska (Theatrical Trailer) High Quality
by NakedBrotha2007

As always, thanks for reading!

Adrienne

Follow- Ice Bears of the Beaufort

Hello again. Every now and then I will find a polar bear cause which stands out, makes mes cry, I feel can use some help, or all of the above. Today, I've got the amazing and inspirational documentary and project Ice Bears of the Beaufort

You can preview the movie, here.

Besides the fact that is an awe inspiring film, this one also hits close to home. While many groups focus a lot of their attention on global warming to solve the greater problem of polar bear extinction, these particular polar bears are actually threatened by another human greed; oil. They are also right here in the U.S., Alaska.

I hope that you can take the time to look through their site, and hopefully see the film. There are many things we can do to support this project, including but not limited to spreading the word! I cannot find a place to make donations on their site just yet, but if they do so in the future, I will update this post. Thanks again for reading!

Adrienne.

(Via icebearsofthebeaufort.com )

Hello!

My name is Adrienne Dene`. I created this blog because I have a deep admiration for the planet, animals, and polar bears in particular. As I'm sure you know, polar bears are a majestic animal, and an endangered animal. I found quite a few polar bear resources online, but I wanted to have a place of my own, to bring these sources together. I will be posting news on polars bears, the climate change, polar bear related stories I find inspiring, and of course, ways you can help. As much as I'll enjoy writing this blog, it's not for me. It's for the bears. Thanks for reading!

Adrienne.