Dear P Gosselin.
Thank you for your consideration. I appreciate the opportunity to be heard. Due to the numbers of polar bears on land this season, I am busy with filming and away from the internet. My reply is not as prompt as it otherwise could be.
When I read that zoos are to be considered the key to polar bears’ survival and at the same time find that there is no discussion of sanctuary, I have to seriously question the dollars, the funding and the intent behind the “zoo” message.
While polar bears that land on eastern Canadian shores are shot and killed, while the polar/grizzly hybrids are shot and killed as soon as they are discovered, while polar bears are hazed and harassed across the Alaskan coast (leading to extreme stress and mortality); in the absence of any sanctuary, alternative habitat, or effort to repopulate traditional polar bear-land habitats, I have to seriously question what kind of “conservation” is really happening. Zoos? If this is the present course and it remains unchecked, I have to think we all are in danger.
Just to be clear, my statement that polar bears can survive climate change but for man’s greed, does not translate to “… not threatened by climate change.” Certainly, if not for the decline in sea ice, polar bears would have a better future. The contraction of polar bear populations will indeed follow the loss of sea ice habitat. The survival of a great many bears will be threatened. This threat is a “clear and present danger” directly attributable to climate induced sea ice reduction.
Polar bear extinction, however, is not a climate issue but is electively driven by human, political, policy and government action. If the true nature of polar bear ecology was acknowledged and pan-arctic land sanctuaries were established, polar bears would survive climate change and continue as a viable species on Earth. As long as the current course of “drowning polar bears” and “sea ice or death” rhetoric preempts the truth, polar bears will have little to no chance for survival.
Re: Ed’s response
Nuclear Genomic Sequences Reveal that Polar Bears Are an Old and Distinct Bear Lineage , Hailer 2012 – is the most recent study of polar bear evolution. Polar bears are an older species, not of “recent origin”, and they are distinct from brown bears, not evolved from within the subset of brown bear genetics. While Hailer suggests a date range of 338,000 to 934,000 years ago for polar bear divergence, additional studies by Yu and Krause support a divergence date of 600,000 to 1.3 million years ago. The consensus resides in 600,000 to 1 million years ago.
What has confused some of the science and resulted in the “recent origin” theory, is the denial of hybrid events taking place between polar bears and brown bears. I say “some”, because not all scientists, as well myself, had discounted hybridization as the account for the “confusion”. Coyne, in “Do Polar Bears Really Exist?”, stated the brown/polar bear mtDNA profile could likely be a result of hybridization and cautioned the interpretation of mtDNA as represented in Lindqvist. The Lindqvist study of the Svalbard jaw bone fossil flat out refuted hybrid events as being relevant and incorrectly determined the answer to the mtDNA question to be resolved with polar bears to be of recent origin. Well, five recently dead grizz/polar bear hybrids of various stages, speaks to a truth that Lindqvist would now have to consider.
The ABC brown bears of Alaska have yet to be addressed directly, but I believe they too are a population descended from the hybrid crossing of polar bears and browns as was the Irish brown bear population. What we are seeing play out in real time, here in today’s Arctic, speaks to an insight into previous hybrid events and lends a credibility that far out weighs theory and speculation. It is happening now, it happened in Ireland…
From Smith – No Ice, No Choice 2012
“35,000 years ago, amidst the last great ice age, Ireland experienced a warming, an “interstadial,” that raised temperatures to within one degree of its modern day climate. Glaciers began to melt and the Irish Sea ice retreated. Polar bears came to land at 50ºN and survived a period nearly 20ºC warmer than today’s arctic. It was this warming, the Castlepook Interstadial, that forced the range of polar bears to overlap with that of Irish brown bears. Contrary to the notion that glacial periods represent a uniformly intact cryosphere, localized warming events can occur, leading to sea ice retreat, the “forced landing” of polar bears, and climate-induced species convergence. In studying the fossil record of this period, researchers in Ireland recently confirmed that a 32,000-year old brown bear fossil was discovered to actually belong to a polar/grizzly hybrid. This hybridization challenges the idea that, during a glacial period, polar bears exist exclusive of land. The extent to which polar bears have experienced forced landings, and the extent to which this reflects upon their ability to cope with change, becomes directly related to their age as a species.”
More than one million years before the Castlepook Interstadial, the Mid Pleistocene Transition occurred, (700,000 to 1.2 million years ago). This shift in glaciation periods from a 41,000 year to 100,000 year glacial-interglacial cycles, took place concurrent with the “polar bear emergence interval” of 600,000 to 1.2 million years ago. CO2 records show that from +- 620,000 to 800,000 years ago, a glacial period of extreme cold and duration occurred, far exceeding any of the glacial periods that followed in the next 600,000 years. It is the very nature of the Pleistocene cryosphere that led to the emergence of polar bears as a species.
While polar bears are here and have clearly survived, what may never be known is to what extent and frequency that “interstadials” took place within the glacial periods, similar to the Castlepook event in the British Isles. When the cyrosphere occupied much of the northern hemisphere, arctic environments and polar bears existed in temperate latitudes, as did Ireland’s. These bears and their environment were much more subject to localized and regional climate variation than an arctic confined to high latitudes as in today’s world (until now). It is exactly the occurrence of these interstadials, along with interglacial periods that have repeatedly and continuously brought the polar bear to land and in contact with the brown bear. This repeated contact and hybridization has led to the continued ability of the the two species to produce fertile offspring nearly 1 million years after divergence. (This relationship does not preclude the polar bear from retaining its’ status as a distinct species.)
Despite the course of nature, natural selection and the process of evolution, polar/grizzly hybrids have been characterized as a threat to polar biodiversity, that species are “imperiled” by interbreeding. Citing no studies, no facts, no “science” to support (an unnamed) science article, the significance of the hybrid genetic exchange between polar bears and browns seems to be less relegated to science than it is to personal opinion. (What would Darwin say?) The forced landing of polar bears may lead to population “bottlenecks”, (referred to by Hailer). But, the role polar bear/brown bear hybrids have played in the survival of polar bears as a species, and the answer to “bottlenecks” may never be known. If the prevailing attitude is to replace science with opinion, and today’s polar/grizzly hybrids remain unprotected and shot on sight, then, maybe Zoos are the answer.
Thank you again.
Arthur C. Smith III
Arthur C. Smith III is a filmmaker who has been filming polar bears up close for 8 years. MUST SEE VIDEO HERE!