Global warming to decimate polar bears: scientists

  Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050, including the entire population in Alaska, because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast.Only in northern Canada and northwestern Greenland are polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the scientific arm of the Interior Department.USGS projects that polar bears during the next half-century will lose 42 per cent of the Arctic range they need to live in during summer in the Polar Basin when they hunt and breed.Polar bears depend on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals, which is their primary food. They rarely catch seals on land or in open water. But the sea ice is decreasing due to climate change and the latest forecasts of how much they are shrinking are, if anything, an underestimate, scientists said.Scientists do not hold out much hope that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other industrial gases blamed for heating the atmosphere like a greenhouse can be turned around in time to help the polar bears anytime soon.
Greenland and Norway have the most polar bears, while a quarter of them live mainly in Alaska and travel to Canada and Russia. The agency says their range will shrink to no longer include Alaska and other southern regions.The findings of U.S. and Canadian scientists are based on six months of new studies, during which the health of three polar bear groups and their dependency on Arctic sea ice were examined using "new and traditional models," Myers said. USGS declined to provide precise estimates of polar bear populations 50 years from now.A separate organization, the World Conservation Union, based in Gland, Switzerland, has estimated the polar bear population in the Arctic now is about 20,000 to 25,000, put at risk by melting sea ice, pollution, hunting, development and tourism.Last December, Kempthorne proposed designating polar bears as a "threatened" species deserving of federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, because of melting Arctic sea ice from global warming. That category is second to "endangered" on the government's list of species believed most likely to become extinct.
That action is in response to a lawsuit in 2005 by three environmental groups - the Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace - to force such a proposal from Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees endangered species.

The Hindu September 8