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.

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!