Who cares about ice bears?

(Erik Malm Photography, Courtesy of WWF)

Well, the parties to the polar bear conservation treaty have been talking for a couple of days now. It seems to me the main thing that will come out of a conference like this is publicity for the plight of the bears and the desperate need to take action on climate change, rather than any concrete measures.Climate change is the real issue here, and the polar bears have become one of the main symbols of the negative effects. The parties need to come out with a strong message to the Copenhagen climate meeting in December.
WWF were understandably upset, to put it mildly, when the five Arctic states participating decided at the start to exclude ngos, an Indigenous organization and other observers from the key sections of the meeting relating to climate change and an action plan.
“We do not know what these countries have to say about protecting polar bears that cannot be shared with the world”, were the words of Geoff York, polar bear coordinator for WWF,interviewed earlier for the ice blog.
(You might also like to hear this report on Living Planet, including Geoff York and scientists working on sea ice development in the Arctic)
WWF and other parties had actually been invited officially to the meeting and given observer status. The Norwegian government wanted them there, but evidently some other countries have their own agenda and were not so happy to have the conservationists on board.

Polar bears depend on the sea ice to hunt their prey (seals in particular).

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Their situation is already getting so bad that some of the experts have observed increasing cannibalistic tendencies amongst smaller, less robust bears.
Andrew Derocher, chair of the Polar Bear Specialist Group, an international network of researchers, is quoted as saying "we don't have hard evidence about climate change, but we have evidence about the numerous symptoms of climate change on polar bears."

With the ice season considerably shorter than it was even just 30 years ago, the bears have problems if they can’t hunt seals, their primary source of food and an essential source of fat to last them through the summer.R esearchers in Alaska have reported several incidents of bears killing and eating other polar bears.N ews agencies are quoting Steven Amstrup, a research wildlife biologist with the US Geological Surcey. He says some bears have been attacking female bears in their denning area. There’s also an increasing trend for polar bears in northern Alaska, to build their den on land.
Geoff York told me in the interview there was no chance of polar bears, who are specialized to the Arctic eco-system with its sea-ice, adapting completely to life on land, because climate change is moving too fast to allow natural adaptation, and because there’s too much competition there. So combatting climate change is the only way to save our white Arctic symbol