PBI's Polar Bear Sustainability Alliance
An increased number of stranded polar bears are showing up in coastal communities. Photo ©: R. & C. Buchanan. Click the image to enlarge.
Polar Bears will need our help as their habitat changes. PBI team members are developing contingency plans to assist management authorities.
Sea Ice Loss
Pressures continue to build on polar bears as their icy habitat shrinks, leaving the bears with a shorter hunting season and disrupted movement patterns. In 2008, the Arctic sea ice shrank to its second-lowest level since satellite measuring began in 1979, ending the year 34% below the long-term average for 1979-2000.
As the Arctic continues to warm, polar bears stranded onshore have started to show up in coastal communities, where their presence threatens both humans and bears. Others are swimming long distances in search of ice from which to hunt.
“It's clear that polar bears are in trouble,” says Amy Cutting of the Oregon Zoo, who serves on PBI's Advisory Council. “As the pack ice retreats, we anticipate problems ranging from nutritionally stressed bears arriving in villages to an increased number of orphaned cubs.”
Gearing up for the Challenge
Given the urgency of the situation, PBI reached out to the zoo community last year for help with developing action plans to assist affected bears. “They're the experts on animal rescue,” says PBI's president, Robert Buchanan, “so we encouraged them to take a leadership role.”
In response, Cutting and others members of the zoo community met last year to sketch out various response scenarios in order to provide decision-makers with a menu of potential actions. Cutting chairs the alliance with Carmi Penny, a PBI Advisory Council member and associate director of collection husbandry science at the San Diego Zoo.
As a follow-up to that first meeting, the group met with field biologists and other members of PBI's Advisory Council early this year to fine-tune those ideas and discuss additional strategies. Representatives from government agencies and other conservation groups joined the discussion as well.
“It was a productive meeting,” Cutting says. “We explored ways to collaborate and recalculated our priorities.”
For example, Cutting says that working with coastal settlements jumped near the top of the list as human-polar bear encounters are expected to be a growing problem. “Last year, wayward bears showed up in the Yukon Territories, Nunavut, and Iceland,” she says. “We anticipate seeing more as the sea ice melts. Our goal is to provide information and resources that will help these communities live safely with their bears.”
Sea Ice Loss
Pressures continue to build on polar bears as their icy habitat shrinks, leaving the bears with a shorter hunting season and disrupted movement patterns. In 2008, the Arctic sea ice shrank to its second-lowest level since satellite measuring began in 1979, ending the year 34% below the long-term average for 1979-2000.
As the Arctic continues to warm, polar bears stranded onshore have started to show up in coastal communities, where their presence threatens both humans and bears. Others are swimming long distances in search of ice from which to hunt.
“It's clear that polar bears are in trouble,” says Amy Cutting of the Oregon Zoo, who serves on PBI's Advisory Council. “As the pack ice retreats, we anticipate problems ranging from nutritionally stressed bears arriving in villages to an increased number of orphaned cubs.”
Gearing up for the Challenge
Given the urgency of the situation, PBI reached out to the zoo community last year for help with developing action plans to assist affected bears. “They're the experts on animal rescue,” says PBI's president, Robert Buchanan, “so we encouraged them to take a leadership role.”
In response, Cutting and others members of the zoo community met last year to sketch out various response scenarios in order to provide decision-makers with a menu of potential actions. Cutting chairs the alliance with Carmi Penny, a PBI Advisory Council member and associate director of collection husbandry science at the San Diego Zoo.
As a follow-up to that first meeting, the group met with field biologists and other members of PBI's Advisory Council early this year to fine-tune those ideas and discuss additional strategies. Representatives from government agencies and other conservation groups joined the discussion as well.
“It was a productive meeting,” Cutting says. “We explored ways to collaborate and recalculated our priorities.”
For example, Cutting says that working with coastal settlements jumped near the top of the list as human-polar bear encounters are expected to be a growing problem. “Last year, wayward bears showed up in the Yukon Territories, Nunavut, and Iceland,” she says. “We anticipate seeing more as the sea ice melts. Our goal is to provide information and resources that will help these communities live safely with their bears.”