Global warming may be harming Pacific walrus: scientists
By Yereth Rosen; editing by Steve Gorman and Greg McCune
Sun Oct 3, 2010 9:11am EDT ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Move over, polar bear. The Pacific walrus may be the new icon of global warming. Like polar bears, walruses are dependent on floating sea ice to rest, forage for food and nurture their young. Like polar bears, walruses are suffering because of a scarcity of summer and fall sea ice in Arctic waters that scientists attribute to climate change. And like polar bears, which were listed as threatened in 2008, protections under the Endangered Species Act may be granted to walruses, even though it is hard to get an accurate count of their population. “You don’t have to know how many passengers are on the Titanic to know it’s in trouble when it hits an iceberg,” said Rebecca Noblin, staff attorney for The Center for Biological Diversity, which sued to obtain Endangered Species Act safeguards for the walrus. For the lumbering, long-tusked marine mammals, problems caused by scarce ice are showing up on beaches in northwestern Alaska and across the Bering Strait in northeastern Siberia. For the third time in four years, large crowds of walruses have congregated this summer on shorelines of the Chukchi Sea instead of spreading over chunks of floating ice. That ice has largely disappeared. This year, summer sea ice levels reached their third-lowest point since satellite measurements started in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. As many as 15,000 walruses began crowding the shore near Point Lay, Alaska, in August and are just starting to disperse as ice forms in chilly fall weather, federal biologists said. … Both reports warn of a grim future. One predicts that the Chukchi Sea will be ice-free for three months a year by mid-century and up to five months by the end of the century, and that ice-free periods in the Bering Sea also will expand. The other study calculates that the ice-dependent walruses have a 40 percent chance of being extinct or in danger of extinction by century’s end. … “There’s this commute that’s new to them, and it costs them,” said Anthony Fischbach, a biologist and walrus specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He also suspects there may be fewer calves than there should be. “It’s certainly shocking to see over 100 dead calves that were apparently healthy. But it’s hard to put it in context,” said Fischbach, one of the biologists who documented the carnage. “Are these the strong ones that come ashore, whereas the ones that are weaker couldn’t make the 150-mile swim to shore?” …
