Polar Bear Standing Report Reveals 2020 Was One other Good Yr For Polar Bears – Watts Up With That?

From polar bear science

Posted on February 24, 2021 |

The State of the Polar Bear Report 2020 is now available. Forget the handshake about what could happen in fifty years – celebrate the fabulous news that polar bears had another good year.

Press release of the Global Warming Policy Forum:

Download the report here.

Quote as:

Crockford, SJ 2021. Polar Bear Condition Report 2020. Global Warming Policy Foundation Report 48, London.

London, February 27th: A well-known Canadian zoologist says the information from Facebook is severely out of date and 2020 was another good year for polar bears.

In the 2020 Polar Bear Condition Report published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) on International Polar Bear Day, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford that polar bear populations are declining due to decreased sea ice, while the portrayal of climate change insists that the scientific literature does not support such a conclusion.

Crockford clarifies that the IUCN’s 2015 Red List assessment of polar bears, which Facebook uses as its fact-checking authority, is seriously out of date. New and compelling evidence shows that regions with heavy summer ice loss are doing well.

These evidences include survey results for 8 of the 19 polar bear subpopulations, only two of which showed insignificant decline after very little ice loss. The remainder were either stable or increasing, and some despite large reductions in sea ice. As a result, the global population is now nearly 30,000 – up from around 26,000 in 2015.

Dr. Crockford points out that in 2020, although summer sea ice had fallen to its second lowest level since 1979, there were no reports of widespread bear starvation, cannibalism, or drowning that could suggest bears were having problems that Survive ice-free season.

As Crockford’s report shows, plankton growth – the critical health measure for marine life in the Arctic – reached record highs in August 2020. More plankton (“primary productivity”) from less summer ice means more food for the entire food chain, including the polarity of bears. This explains why bears thrive in areas like the Barents Sea, where there is less sea ice.

Dr. Crockford notes that, ironically, polar bears in Western Hudson Bay had excellent ice conditions for the fourth year in a row in 2020. The bears were fat and healthy when they came ashore for the summer. Some only spent three months on land – about a month less than most bears in the 1980s and two months less than bears in the 1990s and 2000s.

Dr. Crockford explains that polar bears are more flexible in their habitat requirements than experts believe, and that less summer ice has so far been more beneficial than harmful.

“Polar bears continue to be described as ‘canaries in the coal mine’ for the effects of man-made climate change, but the evidence shows that they are far from being a highly sensitive indicator species. It’s not a myth: 2020 seems to have been another good year for polar bears. “

Main results

• The results of three new polar bear population surveys were released in 2020, and all of them were found to be stable or increasing.
• The South Beaufort polar bear population has been found to have been stable since 2010, has not been reduced as expected, and the official estimate remains around 907.
• The number of polar bears on the M’Clintock Channel has more than doubled from 284 in 2000 to 716 in 2016, due to decreased hunting and improved habitat quality (less perennial ice).
• The numbers for the Gulf of Boothia proved stable with an estimate of 1,525 bears in 2017. The body condition increased between the study periods and thus showed a “good growth potential”.
• Currently, the official IUCN Red List Red Population estimate, completed in 2015, is 22,000 to 31,000 (about 26,000 average), but surveys conducted since then, including those published in 2020, would bring that average to nearly 30,000. There was no sustained, statistically significant decrease in the subpopulation.
• Reports of surveys in Viscount Melville (completed in 2016) and Davis Strait (completed in 2018) have not yet been released. A survey in East Greenland is expected to be completed in 2022.
• In 2020, the Russian authorities announced the first aerial photography of all four polar bear subpopulations (Chukchi, Laptev, Kara and Barents Sea), to be carried out between 2021 and 2023.
• Contrary to expectations, a new study showed that female polar bears in the Svalbard area of ​​the Barents Sea were in better shape (i.e., fatter) in 2015 than they were in the 1990s and early 2000s, despite having to contend with the largest decline in sea ice habitat of any arctic regions.
• Primary productivity in the Arctic has increased since 2002 due to longer ice-free periods (particularly in the seas of Laptev, Eastern Siberia, Kara and Chukchi, but also in the Barents Sea and Hudson Bay), but reached record highs in 2020. More food for the entire Arctic food chain explains why polar bears, ringed seals, and walruses and walruses thrive despite profound sea ice loss.
• In 2020, contrary to expectations, sea ice freezes in Western Hudson Bay in the fall as it did in the 1980s (for the fourth time in a row), and spring sea ice breakup was also as in the 1980s ;; Polar bears on land were in excellent condition. These conditions occurred despite the fact that summer sea ice extent in the entire Arctic was the second lowest since 1979. Data on female polar bear weights in western Hudson Bay, collected since 2004, have not yet been published. Instead, polar bear specialists have converted the standard body condition data collected from 1985 to 2018 into a new metric for population health, which they refer to as “energetics,” which cannot be compared to previous studies. Meanwhile, they continue to cite decades-old raw data from previous studies to support claims that a lack of sea ice leads to declines in adult female body condition, boy survival, and population size.
• Contrary to expectations, in Western Hudson Bay, many polar bears stayed on the deteriorating sea ice for much longer than usual in the summer and stayed on land longer in the fall after the official freezing thresholds were reached, calling into question the suspected relationship between seals and polar bears . Ice cover and polar bear behavior and health. Some bears that left the ice in late August and then returned before late November would have spent only three months on land – about a month less than the 1980s and two months less than the 1990s and 2000s.
• There were few reports of problem polar bears in 2020, with the exception of a fatal polar bear attack in August at a campsite near Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Ryrkaypiy, Chukotka, which was besieged in 2019 by more than 50 bears who had gathered to feed on walrus carcasses nearby, avoided a similar problem in 2020 by posting guards around town. Churchill town had the fewest number of problems in years.
• In 2020, virtually all polar bear research across the Arctic was halted for the entire year due to travel restrictions and efforts to isolate vulnerable northern communities from Covid-19.

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