“Dr Andy Derocher, the outgoing chairman of the PSBG and Professor at the University of  Alberta, wrote to inform Taylor that he was not welcome at the 2009 meeting of the PBSG.

“Keep in mind as you read his comments (below) that Taylor had arranged funding to attend the meeting in Copenhagen, and has been at every meeting of this group since 1981. With 30 years of experience in polar bear research, it goes without saying that he has something to contribute to any discussion about polar bear conservation. This is the original email from Derocher to Taylor explaining why he was not invited:   

Hi Mitch,

The world is a political place and for polar bears, more so now than ever before. I have no problem with dissenting views as long as they are supportable by logic, scientific reasoning, and the literature.  

I do believe, as do many Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) members, that for the sake of polar bear conservation, views that run counter to human induced climate change are extremely unhelpful. In this vein, your positions and statements in the Manhattan Declaration, the Frontier Institute, and the Science and Public Policy Institute are inconsistent with positions taken by the PBSG.

I too was not surprised by the members not endorsing an invitation.

Nothing I heard had to do with your science on harvesting or your research on polar bears – it was the positions you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition.

Time will tell who is correct but the scientific literature is not on the side of those arguing against human induced climate change.
I look forward to having someone else chair the PBSG.

Best regards,
Andy (Derocher) …

Keep reading here:  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/exile_for_non-believers.html
Pdf here:  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Nova-Exile_for_non_believers.pdf

‘Exile for Non-Believers’, by Joanne Nova, published by the Science and Public Policy Institute, September 2009 

Photo Credit: Susanne Miller, United States Fish and Wildlife Service   http://www.fws.gov/home/feature/2008/polarbear012308/polarbearphotos.html

CBC News ran a story last week that Environment Minister, Olayuk Akesuk, has accepted a recommendation from the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board not to change this season’s polar bear quota of 105 polar bears for the Baffin Bay area.  This is despite concerns from government officials about overhunting. Baffin Bay is an area of water and ice between the northern Baffin Island and Greenland. 

Of course much of the English-speaking world would be surprised to learn that polar bears are still hunted.  

The general media narrative is that polar bears are on the verge of extinction from melting Arctic ice as a consequence of global warming.  So, the WWF may feel smug in condemning the people of Nunavut for continuing to hunt polar bears.

Indeed according to Bjorn Lomborg, in his second book ‘Cool It – the Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming’, we have a choice: we can save 49 polar bears a year by banning hunting or 0.06 bears by subscribing to the Kyoto Protocol. 

In reality not every polar bear  needs to be saved. 

Despite media headlines to the contrary, many of the 19 populations of polar bears in the Arctic are stable or increasing.   There is a place for hunting within a quota system.   The skin and meat is used by the local Inuit with polar bear skin trousers as popular as ever. 

But of course the notion of hunting wild animals offends many in the west and a campaign to ban such activities is the lifeblood of environmental campaigning by groups such as WWF. 

[ Picture from Larry's Thule Greenland Website and story via Ice Class]

At the 2nd Working Meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group, in 1970, Dr Vibe said:

“The ecological conditions of the Arctic have changed as a result of this alteration of the climate. Some high Arctic regions get colder winters and less open water in summer. The productivity of the sea decreases in the Arctic and in regions nearer the Atlantic. The ringed seal moves to the areas of higher productivity, and the polar bear follows the seal.

This is the situation today in Northwest as well as in Northeast and Southeast Greenland. All other animals in Greenland, in the sea as well as on land, are affected by the same climatical fluctuations, which are reflected in a regular shift between Arctic and Atlantic conditions (or Continental and Atlantic) over a period of 56 to 66 years; they are more marked every second time the period culminates. The climatic situation of today, with intense movements in the drift ice in summer, is very similar to that 110-120 years ago. For the polar bear, especially in East Greenland, that means unstable living conditions, more roaming, and probably greater loss of animals by drowning in scattered drift ice off South Greenland.

Under the Atlantic conditions of forty years ago [1930], the drift ice from the Polar Basin kept moving throughout the winter and melted at high latitudes in summer. The situation for the polar bear was quite the opposite to that today [1970]. It then had to go ashore early in summer at high latitudes –and fewer got lost.

Alternatively, we could say that the polar bear probably was more numerous 30-40 years ago – as all Arctic animals were – but the Arctic-Continental climate of today has forced it south to regions with unstable drift ice conditions and within the range of man.” (pgs 20-21)

In this extract from Dr Vibe, written in 1970, he notes the negative effects of colder Arctic winters and less open water in summer. He explains that polar bears in the late 1960s were moving southwards to unstable sea conditions, with the possibility that more polar bears were dying.  However, Dr Vibe also noted that polar bears adapt to climatic fluctuations in the Arctic by moving to the areas with more of their primary prey, ringed seals, as ringed seals move to more suitable habitats. 

This note was sent to me by Nichole Hoskin from the Blue Moutains in Australia.

On May 14 2008, when announcing the decision to list polar bears as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, Secretary for the U.S. Department of Interior, Dirk Kempthorne stated,

“Although the population of bears has grown from a low of about 12,000 in the late 1960’s to approximately 25,000 today, our scientists advise me that computer modeling projects a significant population decline by the year 2050.”

But there are no published papers or reports to support the claim that there were about 12,000 polar bears forty years ago.

At the 1968 meeting of International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Polar Bear Specialist Group in Alaska, the Canadian Wildlife Service representatives suggested that numbers were as low as 5,000 in the 1950s and 1960s.

Current Chairman of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, Andrew Derocher, has stressed,

“The early estimates of polar bear abundance are a guess. There is no data at all for the 1950-60s. Nothing but guesses. We are sure the populations were being negatively affected by excess harvest (e.g., aircraft hunting, ship hunting, self-killing guns, traps, and no harvest limits). The harvest levels were huge and growing. The resulting low numbers of bears were due only to excess harvest but, again, it was simply a guess as to the number of bears.”

But how can Dr Derocher be sure that polar bear populations were being negatively affected by harvesting if there is no hard data on population numbers for the same period?

In 1972, at the 3rd Working Meeting of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist group the Norwegian representative, Thor Larson, suggested there were as many as 20,000 in the late 1960s. Larson said,

“Merely by summarising the various national counts, which still must be considered inaccurate, one reaches the conclusion that the worlds total polar bear population is probably closer to 20,000 animals, than to the lower figures often suggested.”

Just maybe there have always been about 20,000 polar bears in the Arctic?

Nichole Hoskin is a research assistant at the Institute of Public Affairs and is adding to the Environmental Wiki associated with this blog.

———————
Other blog posts by Nichole Hoskin on polar bears include:
Polar Bears Can Survive where there is no Summer Sea Ice: A Note from Nichole Hoskin, August 20, 2008. http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003342.html

This blog is a gathering place for people with a common interest in politics and the environment. We strive for tolerance and respect. We don’t always agree with what we publish, but we believe in giving people an opportunity to be heard.

Drawn by Nichole Hoskin using data from Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois

Australian television’s Four Corners showed a program on August 4, 2008, entitled ‘Tipping Point’ claiming that the disappearance of summer sea ice in the Arctic could have drastic consequence for polar bears.

Interestingly there is no summer sea ice in western Hudson Bay in the Canadian Arctic and there are polar bears.

According to polar bear experts, Douglas Clark and Ian Stirling (1998), “The polar bear population that inhabits western Hudson Bay spends the period from late July through early November on shore because the annual ice melts completely.”

Scientists previously thought that these polar bears sustained themselves on stored fat during this ice-free period, however, Derocher et al (1993), found that juvenile males and female polar bears would eat vegetation, such as alpine blueberries, crowberries, grasses and sedge, when marine mammals were unavailable because of the absence of summer sea-ice. This conclusion was based on examination of droppings and observations of signs of feeding on berries, such as berry stained teeth and fur, on polar bears captured in inland areas of western Hudson Bay between 1986 and 1992.

While there is evidence that females and offspring eat berries during the ice-free period, it is unclear whether eating berries significantly contributes to the total energy budget of polar bears. However, Derocher et al argue that eating vegetation “could significantly influence the condition of bears and in turn influence survival, particularly of cubs” and that “the patterns found in western Hudson Bay illustrate the physiological and behavioural plasticity of polar bears.”

—————-
Douglas C. Clark and Ian Stirling, ‘Habitat Preferences of Polar Bears in the Hudson Bay Lowlands during Late Summer and Fall’, (1998) Ursus 10, pp 243-250 at 243 and 248.

Andrew E. Derocher, Dennis Andriashek and Ian Stirling, ‘Terrestrial Foraging by Polar Bears during the Ice-Free Period in Western Hudson Bay’, Arctic (1993) 46(3), pp 251-254 at 251 and 253.

ABC 4 Corner’s ‘The Tipping Point, broadcast August 4, 2008. Reporter: Marian Wilkinson
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2323805.htm

Hi Jennifer,

The Refugee Convention establishes a procedure for States to determine whether the individual is entitled to the status of a refugee. Once status determination takes place, with health and security checks, if the individual is a refugee then he/she is entitled to the human rights specified in the Convention–such as access to health care, education, employment, housing, social security etcetera.

The main problem with trying to include people displaced by climate change within the definition in Article 1(A)(2) of the Refugee Convention is that such persons do not meet the requirements of the definition. To be a refugee, an individual must have:

1) crossed an international frontier–ie. be outside of his/her country of origin. If the individual remains in his/her country of origin, then the individual is an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) and not a refugee

2) “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted” –the person left his/her country of origin because of the fear of being persecuted –the person left or cannot return to his/her country of origin because of the fear of being persecuted

3) the persecution is for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion

4) the individual is unable or unwilling to avail himself of the protection of his country of origin–the main aim of the Refugee Convention was to attach an individual without the protection of a State to another State.

5) subject to cessation and exception clauses–mainly for war-criminals, serious criminals, and persons under the protection of another State/UN agency.

Since the definition of a refugee requires persecution for one of the five specified reasons (race etcetera), the indiscriminate nature of climate change means that people displaced by climate change are not refugees. The issue of how international law will resolve climate change displacement is only just emerging. However, the only academics that have written papers considering the issue are scientists without legal training, who generally don’t understand the definition of a refugee. No legal academics have written about the issue yet. However, Dr Jane McAdam, an expert in Refugee Law, has been getting increasing numbers of questions on this issue from Non-Government Organisations. Jane started the course ‘Forced Migration’ last year so that she could teach refugee law and consider whether it could extend to other circumstances where people are forcibly displaced, such as climate change, development induced displacement and internal displacement. Jane is also the director of the Centre for Climate Change in the Gilbert and Tobin Public Law Centre at the University of NSW.

While it is possible to open up negotiations for an extension of the Refugee Convention, through an Optional Protocol to vary the original Convention, there is significant resistance to doing this from the UN High Commission for Refugees and legal academics. Under International Law, States must consent to the obligations to be bound by them. At present it is unlikely that States will consent to an extension of their obligations to refugees in the current political climate, where most Developed States are actively pursuing policies to avoid responsibilities under the Refugee Convention.

The other alternative is for the negotiation of a separate treaty to specifically address the needs of people displaced by climate change. It is arguably preferable to adopt this approach, particularly considering the negative perceptions of ‘refugees’ in media discussions of immigration policy in Developed States (such as Europe, US and Australia). There is also the advantage of creating a definition that allows for arrangements to be made for resettlement before people are actually displaced by climate change, rather than persisting with the crossing an international border requirement.

It is also important to take into account that there were 9.9 million refugees in 2006. The vast majority of those refugees were in Developing States, such as Pakistan with 2.1 million Afghan refugees; and about 2 million Iraqi refugees in Iran, Syria, Jordon and Turkey. Since the international community has failed to equitably share the burden of refugees on Developing States, it is questionable whether increasing the numbers of people within the refugee definition will lead to durable solutions, such as resettlement in another State.

Nichole Hoskin