topic: Arctic Animals

topic: Arctic Animals

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The new Arctic: Amid record heat, ecosystems morph and wildlife struggle
- Every species of animal and plant that lives or breeds in the Arctic is experiencing dramatic change. As the polar region warms, species endure extreme weather, shrinking and altered habitat, decreased food availability, and competition from invading southern species.
- A wide array of Arctic organisms that rely on sea ice to feed or breed during some or all of their life cycles are threatened by melt: Over the past 40 years, the Arctic Ocean has lost about 75% of its sea ice volume, as measured at the end of the summer melt season. This translates into a loss of sea ice extent and thickness by half on average.
- Researchers note that the rate of change is accelerating at sea and on land. While species can adapt over time, Arctic ecosystem alterations are too rapid for many animals to adapt, making it difficult to guess which species will prevail, which will perish, and where.
- The only thing that could limit future extinctions, researchers say, is to quickly stop burning fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change.

PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ harming wildlife the world over: Study
- While the health impacts of toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, or PFAS, are well known in humans, a new study reports how they affect a wide range of wildlife species.
- In this survey of published studies, the authors found and mapped wildlife exposures worldwide, including impacts on animal species in remote parts of the planet, including the Arctic.
- Researchers documented serious PFAS-triggered conditions in wildlife, including suppressed immunity, liver damage, developmental and reproductive issues, nervous and endocrine system impacts, gut microbiome/bowel disease and more. PFAS pose yet another threat to already beleaguered global wildlife.
- National governments have done little to restrict use of PFAS or remediate pollution, despite growing evidence of increased harm to both humans and wildlife. The study authors call for immediate action to remediate PFAS-contamination sites and regulate industrial chemicals to help protect threatened and endangered species.

Finland’s debate over Indigenous identity and rights turns ugly
- In Finland, a controversial new bill would redefine who is eligible to vote and stand for the assembly of the country’s Indigenous Sámi community, removing a criteria that allows those with distant northern ancestors to participate.
- Critics say the bill will disenfranchise hundreds of people who identify as Sámi, but community leaders, legal experts and historians say these groups fail to meet the definition of an Indigenous community.
- Sámi leaders say the bill will reinforce their right to free, prior and informed consent on any new developments affecting their livelihoods and territories’ ecosystems, but its passage is uncertain in the face of strong opposition.
- The Sámi community across northern Europe is facing increasing pressure from “green energy” developments, such as wind farms and rare earth mines.

Top 10 notable Indigenous stories of 2022
- This year was a historic one for many Indigenous communities around the world that marked many ‘firsts’ with successful land rights rulings, both on the global and national level.
- As Indigenous rights, roles and contributions in biodiversity conservation gain more attention, underreported and critical issues impacting Indigenous peoples were thrust into the spotlight this year.
- To end this impactful year, Mongabay rounds up its 10 most notable Indigenous news stories of 2022.

Counterintuitive: Large wild herbivores may help slow climate change
- Large animals, especially herbivores such as elephants, are often seen as being destructive of vegetation, so are not thought of as a nature-based climate solution. Scientists are proving otherwise.
- By removing living and dead plants, large animals dispose of material that may fuel wildfires, which can add large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere; by consuming vegetation and excreting dung, large animals may improve the availability of nutrients to plants and support the storage of carbon in vegetation and soil.
- By creating gaps in the vegetation and dispersing seeds, large animals create diverse ecosystems with plenty of opportunities for a variety of plants to grow, making ecosystems more resilient and better able to deal with climate change.
- By nibbling down polar region shrubs and trampling snow, large animals help maintain permafrost, helping prevent the release of carbon to the atmosphere.

Melting ice created the perfect storm for a rapidly acidifying Arctic Ocean
- The Arctic Ocean has grown more acidic at a surprising rate in recent years, three times faster than the rest of the global ocean.
- Melting sea ice has exposed the top level of the Arctic Ocean to air rich with carbon dioxide, creating a layer that sopped up carbon from the atmosphere.
- Increased acidity may hamper the ability of marine organisms to build their shells, causing ripple effects through the Arctic food web.

With sea ice melting, glacial ice could be a lifeline for polar bears
- Scientists recently discovered a new subpopulation of polar bears living in southeast Greenland that is genetically and behaviorally distinct.
- While most polar bears depend upon sea ice for survival, the polar bears in Southeast Greenland use pieces of glacial ice as habitat and hunting platforms.
- Large numbers of polar bears are expected to decline as climate change accelerates, but small populations may persist in places like this, where the pace of melting is expected to be slower, experts say.

In the Arctic, Indigenous Sámi keep life centered on reindeer herding
- In Finland’s northern Arctic landscape, the Indigenous Inari Sámi community practice a unique form of reindeer herding and fishing based on traditional knowledge of the region’s climate, winds, ecosystem structure and species behavior.
- The destruction of some of Europe’s last primary forests, along with mining claims and climate change have impacted herding routes, lakes and the availability of important winter foods.
- The community’s food system is also threatened by the loss of language and youth out-migration, disintegrating traditional knowledge of the forests and waters.
- This article is one of an eight-part series showcasing Indigenous food systems covered in the most comprehensive FAO report on the topic to date.

Keep polar bears and their extensive range safe from oil drilling (Commentary)
- In September 2021, a group of conservation groups sued the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to challenge a regulation they allege would allow oil and gas operators to harass, harm and potentially kill polar bears on land and sea in Arctic Alaska.
- In this commentary Steve Blackledge and Dyani Chapman of Environment America argue the battle to save the polar bear can’t be limited to the boundaries of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
- “We hope the courts will examine the facts on the ground and force the government back to the drawing board, leading to a regulation that’s far less threatening and much more protective of the polar bear.”
- The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Arctic biodiversity at risk as world overshoots climate planetary boundary
- The Arctic Ocean biome is changing rapidly, warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. In turn, multiyear sea ice is thinning and shrinking, upsetting the system’s natural equilibrium.
- Thinner sea ice has led to massive under-ice phytoplankton blooms, drawing southern species poleward; fish species from lower latitudes are moving into the peripheral seas of the Arctic Ocean, displacing and outcompeting native Arctic species.
- Predators at the top of the food chain, such as polar bears, are suffering the consequences of disappearing ice, forced onto land for longer periods of time where they cannot productively hunt.
- The Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement has been signed by 10 parties to prevent unregulated commercial fishing in the basin until the region and climate change impacts are better understood by scientists. International cooperation will be critical to protect what biodiversity remains.

A warming Arctic is changing animal migrations, decades of tracking shows
- The newly launched Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA) includes 28 years of terrestrial and marine animal tracking studies on more than 96 species across the Arctic, Arctic marine, and subarctic (including boreal forests and taiga).
- “The Arctic is undergoing some of the most rapid climate change on the planet,” one author said. The resulting warmer winters, earlier spring snowmelt, and the loss of ice are affecting animal movement.
- Researchers conducted their first case studies using the AAMA and found large-scale patterns in the way caribou, moose, wolves, golden eagles, and bears are responding to climate change. The findings were published in the journal Science.
- In their analyses, researchers found that the northernmost herds of caribou have begun giving birth earlier in the spring. After mild winters, immature golden eagles arrived earlier in the spring to breeding grounds than adult birds.

Narwhals beware: Killer whales are on the rise in the Arctic
- Climate change has led to dramatic ice loss in the Arctic, allowing killer whales to access parts of the Canadian Arctic they previously couldn’t.
- A new study found that a population of 136 to 190 killer whales spent the warmer summer months in Canada’s northern Baffin Island region between 2009 and 2018, and preyed on as many as 1,504 narwhals each season.
- While the overall narwhal population isn’t in immediate danger, a steady influx of killer whales could lead to ecosystem transformation through a top-down trophic cascade, according to the study.

Tool use in puffins may point to ‘underestimated’ intelligence in seabirds
- A camera trap in Iceland captured video of an Atlantic puffin using a stick to scratch itself.
- The discovery, along with a similar observation in Wales in 2014, is the first evidence of tool use in seabirds.
- The findings suggest that seabirds like puffins may be more intelligent or possess greater problem-solving skills than once thought.

Vanishing sea ice in the Arctic could shake up seabird migrations
- Researchers have developed a framework to aid in understanding the changes to seabird migration that could result from the loss of Arctic sea ice due to climate change.
- The team found that one species, the little auk, would expend about half as much energy by shifting its migration from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific, rather than their traditional migration or if they just stayed put in the high Arctic.
- The team also mined the scientific literature and found 29 bird species with the potential for a similar shift in their migratory routes.

Shrinking sea ice in the Arctic opens new pathways for animal disease
- Scientists have discovered that periods of minimal sea ice in the Arctic between 2001 and 2016 were followed by spikes in a deadly disease that affects seals, sea lions and sea otters.
- The team used satellite imagery showing decreases in sea ice combined with GPS collar data tracking animal movements over the 15-year study period.
- After periods of sea ice contraction, the odds that a sampled animal would be affected by the disease were more than nine times higher than typical years.

Extreme snowfall led to reproductive collapse in some Arctic wildlife in 2018
- In 2018, while the Arctic continued to see warmer summers and retreating snow cover in general because of rising global temperatures, there was also very heavy snowfall that kept several areas covered in “unusually large amounts of snow” even in late summer, when much of it should have melted.
- In northeast Greenland, one of the regions affected by the excessive snowfall, most animals and plants, including Arctic foxes and migratory shorebirds, failed to reproduce, researchers found.
- While one non-breeding year may not spell doom for Arctic wildlife, frequent extreme weather events like the one in 2018 could make it harder for Arctic species to bounce back and survive, the researchers warn.

As climate crisis deepens, wildlife adapts, maybe with lessons for us
- Shifts in the timing of lifecycle events, like reproduction or migration, are widely thought to be the most common response of wildlife to global warming.
- In recent years, pikas have been observed modifying their foraging habits in ways that may be behavioral adaptations to a changing climate.
- A long-term study in Kutai National Park on the island of Borneo in Indonesia has shown how extreme weather, brought by the intensifying El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, is affecting the behavior, habitat requirements, feeding ecology and birth intervals of orangutans.
- Researchers have discovered that African penguins, may be falling into a sort of “ecological trap,” one that humans created through overfishing and climate change.

Arctic in trouble: Sea ice melt falls to record lows for early April
- As of April 9, the Arctic had around 13.6 million square kilometers (5.3 million square miles) of ice cover, putting it firmly below any other year on record for the same time of year, and nearly two weeks ahead of previous early April records set in 2017 and 2018.
- The implications of such low sea ice extent for this time of year is concerning to scientists. However, predicting seasonal ice melt is very difficult, and changes in Arctic weather could cause the early melt to stall, or even reverse to some degree.
- Two new Arctic studies are also troubling. Researchers have found that between 1998 and 2017, seventeen percent less ice exited shallow continental shelf seas — nurseries for sea ice — to reach the Central Arctic Ocean and Fram Strait. This loss in ice being transported could have serious implications for Arctic sea ice melt and impact biodiversity as well.
- A second study found that rising Arctic air temperatures are driving change across the entire ecosystem. Hotter temperatures are impacting forest and tundra growing seasons, increasing wildfires, boosting rain and snowfall, and melting ice — shifting the region from its 20th century condition into an unprecedented state.

Camera traps and customary wisdom help redefine bear conservation
- Camera traps set up around a Canadian artic research camp led to the first published documentation of all three North American bear species in the same locations.
- Although more than 90 percent of the 401 bear visits recorded by the cameras were of polar bears, the presence of grizzlies, which have been seen as threatening polar bears, has caused debate among scientists, conservation managers and local communities.
- The camera data did not document interactions among polar, grizzly and black bears, though the researchers say the spatial overlap of the species suggests potential for interspecies interactions to occur, raising questions about how they might affect bear conservation efforts in the future.
- Some conservation managers, aware that their values align with those of the region’s Indigenous communities, are increasingly marrying traditional wisdom to scientific methods to inform their work.

Shorebirds can no longer count on the Arctic as a safe haven for rearing their young
- A new analysis of over 70 years’ worth of shorebird population data suggests that climate change has altered the migratory birds’ Arctic safe haven to such a degree that it is now helping drive rapid declines in their numbers.
- After studying data from 38,191 nests found across all seven continents and belonging to 237 populations of 111 different species, an international team led by researchers with the Milner Centre for Evolution at the UK’s University of Bath determined that shorebirds worldwide have experienced a drastic increase in nest predation over the past seven decades.
- The data suggests that nest predation rates have doubled in the North Temperate Zone, which includes Europe and most of Asia and North America. In the Arctic, which migratory shorebirds are used to using as something of a refuge, rates of daily nest predation have tripled.

Whales not enough sustenance for polar bears in fast-changing climate
- Scientists believe that whale carcasses may have helped polar bears survive past upswings in temperatures that melted the sea ice from which they usually hunt seals.
- As the current changing climate threatens to make the Arctic ice-free during the summer, this strategy may help some populations of polar bears to survive.
- But according to new study, whale carcasses won’t provide enough food for most bear populations because there are fewer whales than there once were, and human settlements, industry and shipping could affect the bears’ access to any carcasses that do wash ashore.

Taking it slow can help reduce impacts of Arctic shipping on whales (commentary)
- Thanks to climate change, traveling through the Northwest Passage is quickly becoming an exotic option for cruise ship passengers — and an enticing shortcut for cargo ships.
- But an increasingly ice-free Arctic means more than just a chance for a new sightseeing adventure: Significantly increased ship traffic is altering the submarine calm of one of the quietest places on Earth. That could have serious implications for marine mammals and fish that rely on sound for group cohesion, socializing, finding mates, navigating, and detecting threats.
- As we grow sensitive to plastics and other toxins that plague ocean species, we must remember that while noise is the one form of pollution that we cannot see, we can work together to turn down the volume.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

A warmer climate tinkers with Arctic spider’s choice of prey
- A team of researchers found that higher temperatures led Arctic wolf spiders to eat fewer insect-like springtails in study plots.
- Springtails eat fungus, an essential decomposer in the Arctic ecosystem, so with more springtails around in the warmer study plots, there was less decomposition.
- The scientists suggest that this change in prey preference could modulate the effects of a warming climate on the carbon that’s released from the thawing tundra.

Red flags abound as a warming Arctic opens up to shipping
- Ship traffic through the Arctic is expected to increase dramatically as global warming renders a growing proportion of the region ice-free.
- Conservationists warn that the higher number of vessels raises the risks of pollution, oil spills, and disturbances to marine mammals from propeller noise.
- They propose a slate of regulatory measures that could help mitigate the anticipated impacts, which could then be extended to other vulnerable maritime regions.

Species evolve more than twice as fast at poles as in tropics: study
- Considering the swarming biodiversity at the equator, and the lack of diversity near the poles, scientists have long assumed that species evolve more rapidly in warm waters. But a new study of the evolutionary development of 30,000 fish species has turned that idea on its head.
- Biologists found that a fish species in the tropics split into a new species on average every 10 to 20 million years. But near the poles, that average rate is roughly every four million years – more than twice as fast.
- The reason may be the far more extreme and less stable climatic conditions found near the poles. This results in more frequent extinctions, which clears out species diversity and empties ecological niches, setting the stage for the next new burst of species formation in other groups of organisms.
- But if species form faster at the poles than in the tropics, why isn’t there greater biodiversity in the Arctic and Antarctic than at the equator? One possibility: while speciation is more rapid at the poles, extinctions may be more numerous too. But this still isn’t clear, and more research will be needed to find out.

Ice-free passage for ships through the Arctic could cause problems for marine mammals
- A new study suggests that increased ship traffic in the Arctic, as ice there melts due to climate change, could disturb marine mammal species.
- In their assessment of 80 subpopulations living along the Northwest Passage and Russia’s Northern Sea Route, 42 are likely to be affected by a greater number of commercial ships, researchers found.
- The team suggests that mitigation measures, such as those employed in other parts of the world to protect North Atlantic right whales, could be effective.

Animal trainers are teaching wildlife to conserve themselves
- Positive training helps pets and their owners bond. But animal trainers working to conserve wildlife often have the opposite goal: teaching animals in the wild to avoid human beings — people often being the most dangerous creatures in the jungle.
- Wildlife kept in zoos have been trained with rewards to accept unnatural processes, procedures that previously might have required restraint or even anesthesia: allowing tooth brushing, hoof trimming, injections and blood draws — turning once alien actions into positive experiences for the captive animals.
- Animal trainers decades ago learned to train dolphins without having physical contact with the animals. More recently, a chimpanzee troop in Sierra Leone was taught to scream alarm in unison when poachers approached, alerting nearby rangers to come to the rescue — achieving an 80 percent decrease in poaching.
- Trainers have taught captive bred condors how to be more like wild condors, seeking food within their natural habitat and not congregating in towns. They’ve also taught polar bears to avoid anything associated with humans, preventing the bears from raiding trash cans and significantly decreasing wildlife conflicts.

Spot the pattern: Whisker-prints and citizen science
- University of Manitoba researchers are pioneering the use of whisker pattern analysis software to identify and track polar bears in Canada.
- Whisker print identification can aid polar bear researchers in investigating bear behaviors and interactions, assessing and mitigating potential human-polar bear conflict, and evaluating the potential impacts of climate change on the bears.
- The integration of citizen science into the Whiskerprint Project has helped researchers to collect the bears’ images for identification and raise awareness of the importance of polar bear conservation, while enhancing STEM education for local students.

Surprise! Animals are active and plentiful during harsh, dark Arctic winters
- Scientists conducted a series of extensive surveys in Kongsfjorden in Svalbard, Norway, during three consecutive winters from 2013 to 2015.
- Despite the sunless skies during polar winters, various animals — from tiny plankton to large seabirds — seem to be up and moving in the Arctic Ocean, according to the study.
- Most animals in the ocean continued to feed, grow, and reproduce during the polar nights, and some species were more abundant in winter than at other times of the year, the study found.

Arctic countries prohibit commercial fishing in North Pole
- In July, all five countries bordering the Arctic Ocean signed an agreement that prohibits commercial fishing in the international waters of the central Arctic Ocean.
- Until recently, this region remained covered by ice all year round, but the retreat of sea ice due to global warming has prompted predictions that it may become ice-free during the summers, opening it to fishing and other forms of exploitation.
- A lack of scientific information about fish stocks in the region and how they may be responding to the rapidly changing ecosystem prompted the countries to sign the declaration.

Arctic upheaval: new book outlines challenges at the top of the world

Chukotkan dancers. Subsistence hunting will be increasingly difficult for the Inuit who depend on marine mammals in the Arctic to provide them with food and materials for clothing. Photo by: Edward Struzik. For most of us, the Arctic is not at the front of our minds. We view it as cold, stark, and, most importantly, […]
The only solution for polar bears: ‘stop the rise in CO2 and other greenhouse gases’

Steven Amstrup will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 11th, 2014. In 1773, an expedition headed by Constantine John Phipps, the Second Baron Mulgrave, embarked on a dangerous journey North—to see how far they could go before having to turn back. In his report at the end of […]
Scientists can now accurately count polar bears…from space

Polar bears are big animals. As the world’s largest land predators, a single male can weigh over a staggering 700 kilograms (about 1,500 pounds). But as impressive as they are, it’s difficult to imagine counting polar bears from space. Still, this is exactly what scientists have done according to a new paper in the open-access […]
From seals to starfish: polar bears radically shift diet as habitat melts

One of the most iconic species of the ongoing climate change drama, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have dropped in numbers as their habitat melts, with previous estimates forecasting a further 30 percent reduction within three generations. However, their situation may not be as dire as it seems. A new study, published in the journals Polar […]
Predator appreciation: how saving lions, tigers, and polar bears could rescue ourselves

Lioness feeding. Photo by: Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson. In the new book, In Predatory Light: Lions and Tigers and Polar Bears, authors Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, Sy Montgomery, and John Houston, and photographers Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson share with us an impassioned and detailed appeal to appreciate three of the world’s biggest predators: lions, […]
Climate change killing harp seal pups

As sea ice levels continue to decline in the northern hemisphere, scientists are observing an unsettling trend in harp seal young mortalities regardless of juvenile fitness. While a recent study found that in harp seal breeding regions ice cover decreased by up to 6% a decade from 1979 on, a follow-up study in PLoS ONE […]
Reduction in snow threatens Arctic seals

Arctic snowfall accumulation plays a critical role in ringed seal breeding, but may be at risk due to climate change, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. Sea ice, which is disappearing at an alarming rate, provides a crucial platform for the deep snow seals need to reproduce. Ringed seals (Phoca hispida) require […]
Above the ocean: saving the world’s most threatened birds

This post is an expanded version of an article that appeared in August on Yale e360: Easing The Collateral Damage Fisheries Inflict on Seabirds.
By imitating human voices, beluga whale may have been attempting to communicate

Beluga whale. Photo by: Premier.gov.ru. Five years after the death of a captive beluga whale named NOC, researchers have discovered that the marine mammal may have been trying to communicate with people by mimicking humans voices at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego. Analyzing tapes of human-like speech from the young male beluga […]
Cute animal picture of the day: baby walruses on the mend

Mitik, an orphaned male, will soon make his way from Alaska to New York City. Mitik is still having health problems. Photo courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Two walrus male calves were discovered over the summer near Barrow, Alaska, dehydrated and ill, after their separate mothers perished. The calves have been receiving care at […]
Arctic sea ice is ‘toast’ as old record shattered

Sea ice extent hit a record low on August 26th, and then continued to decline another 700,000 square kilometers. Image courtesy of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Some twenty days after breaking the record for the lowest sea ice extent, the Arctic sea ice has hit a new rock bottom and […]
Sea ice falls to record low with over two weeks of melting left

Sea ice extent hits record low on August 26th. Image courtesy of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). One of the most visible impacts of climate change—melting summer sea ice in the Arctic—just hit a new milestone. Scientists with the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) have declared that this […]
Just how far can a polar bear swim?

Polar bear swimming in open water. Photo by: USGS. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are capable of swimming incredible distances, according to a new study published in Zoology, which recorded polar bears regularly swimming over 30 miles (48 kilometers) and, in one case, as far as 220 miles (354 kilometers). The researchers believe the ability of […]
87 marine mammals still eaten by people

Local fishers in Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo with a butchered Atlantic humpback dolphin, a West African endemic that has been extirpated from much of its range as fisheries decline and people shift to other sources of protein. Photo by: Tim Collins. Threats to marine mammals usually include climate change, drowning as by-catch, pollution, […]
Discovery Channel backtracks, promises to air climate change episode of new Frozen Planet series

Discovery Channel has announced that it will, in fact, air the last episode of the new series Frozen Planet, which focuses solely on the impact of climate change at the world’s poles. By the creators of universally-acclaimed Planet Earth, the full series explores the wildlife and environs of the Arctic and Antarctic, but the Discovery […]
Featured video: Arctic ice melt creates mass walrus ‘haul-outs’
The disintegration of the Arctic sea ice, which hit the second lowest record this year, is forcing a number of Arctic animals to change their behavior. The footage below is of thousands of walrus hauling out of the water onto shore land to rest. In years past, these walruses would’ve spent this time foraging in […]
Deepwater spill ‘meets the Titanic’: groups sue to stop Arctic drilling

Approximate site of preliminarily approved drilling by Shell. Pink outline is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Image made with Google Earth. Following the Obama administration’s approval of Royal Dutch Shell to drill in the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea, a wide-swathe of environmental have filed a lawsuit to stop the drilling, which could begin as early […]
Mass walrus haul-outs, polar bear cub mortality linked to climate change

Walruses haul-out of the water en masse . Photo by: Baine Thorn/NOAA . Recent, unprecedented walrus haul-outs and increased instances of long-distance swims by polar bears show the direct impacts on wildlife of dwindling Arctic sea ice from climate change. These threatened species also face the prospect of offshore drilling in the Arctic after the […]
Mass walrus haul-outs, polar bear cub mortality linked to climate change

Walruses haul-out of the water en masse. Photo by Baine Thorn/NOAA. Recent, unprecedented walrus haul-outs and increased instances of long-distance swims by polar bears show the direct impacts on wildlife of dwindling Arctic sea ice from climate change. These threatened species also face the prospect of offshore drilling in the Arctic after the Obama Administration […]

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