Susan Crockford
The Polar Wildlife Report is a peer reviewed abstract of the newest info on polar animals, relative to historic information, based mostly on a evaluation of 2022 scientific literature and media studies. It’s meant for a large viewers, together with scientists, academics, college students, decision-makers and most of the people interested by animals that dwell in Arctic and Antarctic habitats, together with polar bears, killer whales, krill, and penguins.
Polar wildlife was thriving in 2022
London, 27 February: A outstanding Canadian zoologist says that Arctic and Antarctic wildlife continued to thrive in 2022 regardless of predictions of impending disaster.
Within the Polar Wildlife Report 2022, revealed by the World Warming Coverage Basis (GWPF) on Worldwide Polar Bear Day, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that ice-dependent species within the Arctic and Antarctic present no signal of impending inhabitants crashes resulting from lack of sea ice.
Crockford’s report reveals that there have been no studies in 2022 that may recommend that polar wildlife is struggling on account of decreased sea-ice extent: no ravenous polar bears or walrus, no beach-cast useless seals, no marked declines in nice whale numbers, no drowned penguin chicks.
Whereas a number of Antarctic penguin species and the Antarctic minke whale seem to have suffered a latest decline in abundance, these had been unrelated to sea-ice cowl within the Southern Ocean. Equally, within the Arctic, a latest 27% decline in polar bear numbers in Western Hudson Bay was discovered to be unrelated to sea-ice situations over the past 5 years.
Certainly, opposite to all expectations, crucial Antarctic winter sea ice has been rising since 1979. Whereas sea-ice specialists have lengthy voiced concerns that laptop fashions of future Antarctic sea ice protection are significantly flawed, biologists involved about the way forward for ice-dependent emperor penguins and Antarctic krill have continued to make use of them to justify alarmist predictions.
Crockford concludes: “In each the Arctic and Antarctic, much less summer time sea ice has meant elevated main productiveness, which in flip has meant extra meals for all animals. This explains partially why polar wildlife continues to thrive, even in areas with a lot decreased summer time sea-ice protection.”
Crockford, S.J. 2023. The Polar Wildlife Report. World Warming Coverage Basis Briefing 63, London. pdf right here.
Key Findings
- There have been no studies in 2022 that may recommend polar wildlife is struggling on account of decreased sea-ice extent; in each the Arctic and Antarctic, much less summer time sea ice and elevated main productiveness over the past 20 years has meant extra meals for all animals, which explains partially why polar wildlife has been thriving.
- Arctic sea ice in summer time has declined since 1979, however has had an general flat pattern since 2007; protection was once more properly under common within the Barents and Chukchi Seas in 2022, the place continued excessive main productiveness has supplied plentiful meals sources for wildlife; winter ice protection in 2022 was barely decrease than 2020 however general has proven a comparatively flat pattern since 2011.
- Ice-dependent polar bears worldwide in all probability now quantity about 32,000, with a variety of potential error; a survey of Western Hudson Bay polar bears in 2021 generated a inhabitants decline of 27% since 2016, however this didn’t correlate with lack of sea ice. A genetically-distinct subpopulation of polar bears was found thriving in SE Greenland, and western Barents Sea bears (Norway) are nonetheless doing properly regardless of essentially the most profound summer time sea-ice lack of all Arctic areas.
- Atlantic walrus numbers are nonetheless low, however recovering within the Barents Sea and japanese North America. A brand new inhabitants estimate of Pacific walrus in 2019 reveals greater than 200,000 exist within the Chukchi/Bering Sea space. Extra killer whales had been reported visiting the Japanese Canadian Arctic, and in Alaska and the Western Canadian Arctic, bowhead whales are thriving.
- Antarctic sea ice extent has barely modified since 1979: very important winter ice has barely elevated general whereas summer time ice has barely declined (with its lowest extent in December 2022), all whereas general main productiveness has elevated. A brand new sea ice predictive mannequin acknowledges earlier flaws and doesn’t predict a future decline till 2050 on the earliest.
- Krill are essential prey for a lot of species of wildlife (particularly large numbers of nice whales and penguins) that dwell or feed within the Southern Ocean. Future intensification of economic fishing of krill (largely to feed farmed fish) is probably going the biggest conservation menace to native wildlife, given latest geopolitical tensions over efficient fisheries administration.
- Numbers of fin, blue, humpback, and southern proper whales feeding in Antarctic waters in summer time have elevated in recent times, and whereas minke whale numbers seem to have declined, an estimated 500,000 people nonetheless frequent the area.
- Killer whales (orcas) are the highest predator within the Southern Ocean and most populations seem like thriving. The IUCN lists all ice-dependent seals in Antarctica as ‘least concern’.
- A number of albatross and enormous petrel species are thought-about ‘weak’ by the IUCN resulting from lethal interactions with long-line trawlers fishing for Antarctic toothfish (Patagonian sea bass), whereas over-fishing of this cod-like species and the herring-like Antarctic silverfish can be a priority.
- Emperor penguins, the biggest and most ice-dependent penguin species, had been categorized as ‘Threatened’ on the US Endangered Species Record in 2022 however stay ‘Close to Threatened’ in line with the IUCN Pink Record due to the big dimension of their breeding inhabitants and the acknowledged uncertainty of future sea-ice predictions.
