Contact Information:Paul Laustsen, USGS, 650-329-4046Bruce Woods, US F&WS, 907-786-36956 April 2012 ANCHORAGE – In the past two weeks, 9 polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea region near Barrow were observed with alopecia, or loss of fur, and other skin lesions. The animals were otherwise healthy in appearance and behavior. The cause and significance of […]
By Bill Rigby27 December 2011 SEATTLE – Scientists in Alaska are investigating whether local seals are being sickened by radiation from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. Scores of ring seals have washed up on Alaska’s Arctic coastline since July, suffering or killed by a mysterious disease marked by bleeding lesions on the hind flippers, irritated […]
November 24 (mongabay.com) – Recent arctic sea ice loss is ‘unprecedented’ over the past 1,450 years, concludes a reconstruction of ice records published in the journal Nature. The study, which was led by Christophe Kinnard of Chile’s Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Aridas, used terrestrial proxies including ice cores, lake sediments, tree ring data, […]
November 15 (Daily Mail) – An episode of the BBC’s Frozen Planet documentary series that looks at climate change has been scrapped in the U.S., where many are hostile to the idea of global warming. British viewers will see all seven episodes of the multi-million-pound nature series throughout the Autumn. But U.S. audiences will not […]
Contact: Senior Scientist Christian Sonne, csh@dmu.dk, Department of Bioscience and National Centre for Environment and Energy, Aarhus University Tel.: +45 3078 3172 / +45 8715 870413 October 2011 New doctoral thesis documents that industrial chemicals are transported from the industrialised world to the Arctic via air and sea currents. Here, the cocktail of environmental toxins […]
By Richard Hall27 August 2011 British Petroleum has again drawn the ire of environmentalists after a security guard at one of its Alaskan oil fields shot dead a polar bear, an animal listed as threatened with extinction. A BP spokesman said the security guard shot the bear on 3 August after it approached employee housing. […]
The Arctic may be the world’s next geopolitical battleground. Temperatures there are rising faster than anywhere else in the world, and the melting ice will have profound consequences on the roof of the world, opening strategic waterways to shipping, reducing the ice cap on Greenland, and spurring a rush to claim rights to the wealth […]
By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk28 July 2011 It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice. But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a […]
By Deborah Zabarenko18 July 2011 WASHINGTON — Polar bear cubs forced to swim long distances with their mothers as their icy Arctic habitat melts appear to have a higher mortality rate than cubs that didn’t have to swim as far, a new study reports. Polar bears hunt, feed and give birth on ice or on […]
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Global mercury emissions could grow by 25 percent by 2020 if no action is taken to control them, posing a threat to polar bears, whales and seals and the Arctic communities who hunt those animals for food, an authoritative international study says. The assessment by a scientific body set up by the […]
