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Kaktovik residents and visiting biologists worked together to free a large polar bear that became entangled in a fishing net near a Beaufort Sea barrier island Saturday night. The “large male” polar bear got stuck in a net near the North Slope village of about 300 people Saturday evening, the U.S. Geological

Polar bears are at risk of dying off if humans don't reverse the trend of global warming, a blunt U.S. government report filed Thursday said. "The single most important step for polar bear conservation is decisive action to address Arctic warming," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a draft recovery plan, part of the process after the agency listed the species as threatened in 2008. "Short of action that effectively addresses the primary cause of diminishing sea ice, it is unlikely that polar bears will be recovered." Halting Arctic warming will require a global commitment, said Jenifer Kohout,...

The rebounding of polar bear populations over the past several decades has been a huge success story. Far from being endangered, vulnerable, or threatened, polar bears are thriving; their populations have exploded in virtually all of their habitats of the circumpolar nations. That’s good news for the polar bears, but bad news for the Polar Bear Specialist Group, the highly politicized organization of wildlife “scientists” that receives massive funding and favorable media coverage for regularly claiming that hoary arctic predators are perilously close to extinction due to human-caused global warming.The Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) is, perhaps, the best-known...

Despite dire predictions that the North Pole would be ice-free in the near future, Arctic Sea ice levels have been more stable than scientists predicted.  So far this winter, Arctic Sea ice levels are above where they were at the same time last winter and are well within the the standard deviation of the 1981 to 2010 variation, according to daily sea ice data.Europe’s CryoSat-2 satellite found that sea-ice volumes for the fall of 2014 were above the average extent for the last five years. Sea-ice levels were up sharply from 2011 and 2012, according to the satellite– only slightly...

THE North and South Poles are “not melting”, according to a leading global warming expert. In fact, the poles are “much more stable” than climate scientists once predicted and could even be much thicker than previously thought. For years, scientists have suggested that both poles are melting at an alarming rate because of warming temperatures – dangerously raising the Earth’s sea levels while threatening the homes of Arctic and Antarctic animals. But the uncertainty surrounding climate change and the polar ice caps reached a new level this month when research suggested the ice in the Antarctic is actually growing. And...

Are hybrids -- such as polar/grizzly bear offspring -- a bad thing? Conventional wisdom suggests that when an endangered species -- such as a polar bear -- mates with a close relative -- such as a grizzly, or brown, bear -- the resulting hybrid speeds the endangered party to the affair along the path to extinction more quickly. In fact, creatures like the one described -- called “pizzly” or “grolar” bears -- already exist. But perhaps hybridization isn’t as bad as biologists feared, a possibility the New York Times explores in a lengthy Sunday magazine piece titled “Should You Fear...

Sometimes I think Satan must love the way we use animals to sell products and ideas. We see Clydesdale horses used to sell beer, Camels to sell cigarettes, Ducks and Mice to sell children entertainment and to lure the family to theme parks, Owls and Black Bears to sell conservation ideas, and Polar Bears to sell everything from sodas to Global Warming. Yup, those who worship the planet have learned from the corporate world that animals are great props for selling ideas also. Makes sense when you think about it. Satan was a serpent, and the most beautiful and...

Five meters of ice– about 16 feet thick - is threatening the survival of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea region along Alaska’s Arctic coast, according to Dr. Susan J. Crockford, an evolutionary biologist in British Columbia who has studied polar bears for most of her 35-year career. That’s because the thick ice ridges could prevent ringed seals, the bears’ major prey, from creating breathing holes they need to survive in the frigid waters, Crockford told CNSNews.com. “Prompted by reports of the heaviest sea ice conditions on the East Coast ‘in decades’ and news that ice on the Great...

Five meters of ice—about 16 feet thick—is threatening the survival of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea region along Alaska’s Arctic coast, according to Dr. Susan J. Crockford, an evolutionary biologist in British Columbia who has studied polar bears for most of her 35-year career. That’s because the thick ice ridges could prevent ringed seals, the bears’ major prey, from creating breathing holes they need to survive in the frigid waters, Crockford told CNSNews.com. “Prompted by reports of the heaviest sea ice conditions on the East Coast ‘in decades’ and news that ice on the Great Lakes is, for...

I’m not sure what to make of the comment from a Canadian researcher who is calling out the Humane Society regarding ads they have run deploring polar bear hunting for the commercial trade in bear goods. I can’t peg the comments as a Leninist deviation from purely Marxist form of determinism or if it’s more of a rootless cosmopolitan deviation from a strictly Stalinist line of Polar Bearism for One Country. Truthfully, it could both and I wouldn’t know it. Nor would you—I hope. We have come so far along the progressive continuum, that I'm not sure Progressives know even...

A group of researchers say they have established a new biomarker for how stressed polar bears are about climate change. Last year, a team reported that fluctuations in climate and ice cover are closely related to stress among polar bears in East Greenland as indicated by levels of the stress hormone cortisol in hair samples. The team is hopeful this type of analysis will be beneficial once others learn that it can now be done with much greater reliability. "Nobody else has done this so far," says Jerrold Meyer of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who calls himself a behavioral...

Polar bears are often thought as the animal that is most effected by global warming, but new research has shown that when the food they prefer is not available, the bears are willing to change their diet, according to the International Business Times. Though they prefer seal, in times when they are not available researchers have found they will eat caribou, snow geese, grass seed and berries.

JUNEAU, Alaska — An Alaska scientist whose observations of drowned polar bears helped galvanize the global warming movement has retired as part of a settlement with a federal agency. Charles Monnett was briefly suspended in 2011 from his work with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management —during an inspector general's investigation into a polar bear research contract he managed. Investigators in their report released last year said the probe was prompted by a complaint from an Interior Department employee who alleged that Monnett had wrongfully released...

If no one else, WND, the New York Post, and now Fox News have started paying serious attention to an urban pastime known as "the knockout game" or occasionally as "polar bear hunting," a phenomenon that has caused at least seven deaths and countless serious injuries. The "polar bear" refers to the invariably white or at least non-black victim of a hunt by a young black male, usually one of a pack of the same. The hunters tend to prey on those who seem vulnerable. This includes old people, women, children, and, most often, clueless male liberals-- like the Pittsburgh...

A St. Louis woman was slugged in the face this week in the latest local “knock-out game” attack. Via Facebook: Ashley Depew, is the younger sister who I taught at my dance studio. She was a victim of the “one Punch Knockdown,” a game that teenagers are now doing, this was done in STL a couple nights ago. Please Pray for a quick recovery as she is going under reconstruction surgery. These groups of teenagers will punch out anybody, then scatter to run. please don’t be a victim and always be aware of your surroundings! There have been several...

* Polar bear populations have stablised and may even be increasing. * This is despite dire predictions of 70 per cent decline in numbers by 2050. * One resident of Alaskan village says 'this has been a great year for bears' A bitter wind blows off the Arctic Ocean but the mother polar bear and her two cubs standing just 50ft in front of me are in their element. For more than an hour I watch from a boat just offshore, transfixed and oblivious to the below-freezing temperatures, as the four-month-old twins gambol across the snow. For years polar bears...

Junk Science: Earth has gained 19,000 Manhattans of sea ice since this date last year, the largest increase on record. There is more sea ice now than there was in mid-September 1990. Al Gore, call your office. A 2007 prediction that summer in the North Pole could be "ice-free by 2013" that was cited by former Vice President Al Gore in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech has proven to be off . .. by 920,000 square miles. But then Democrats have never been good at math — or climate science. In his Dec. 10, 2007, "Earth has a fever"...

Maine man badly injured in Torngat Mountains National Park. A U.S. hiker vividly recalls the night one of his fellow campers was pulled from his tent and attacked by a polar bear in Torngat Mountains National Park in northern Labrador. Matt Dyer, a lawyer from Maine, was badly injured during the attack at around 1:30 a.m. AT on July 24. Richard Eisenberg was with Dyer and six other hikers as part of a Sierra Club hiking trip to the remote park. He said the group woke up to the sounds of Dyer screaming as he was dragged from his tent....

SACRAMENTO, CA; August 9, 2013: In a segment scheduled to air this Sunday, Fox News Supreme Court reporter Shannon Bream will interview Pacific Legal Foundation President Rob Rivett about PLF’s challenge to the federal government’s unjustified listing of the polar bear as “threatened” on the Endangered Species Act list. The case is: Safari Club International, et al. v. Jewell, et al.

Image from Tundrabuggy.com – comedy added by WUWTFrom NPR: The Inconvenient Truth About Polar BearsIn 2008, reports of polar bears’ inevitable march toward extinction gripped headlines. Stories of thinning Arctic ice and even polar bear cannibalism combined to make these predators into a powerful symbol in the debate about climate change.The headlines caught Zac Unger’s attention, and he decided to write a book about the bears.Unger made a plan to move to Churchill, Manitoba, a flat, gray place on the Hudson Bay in northern Canada accessible only by train or plane. For a few months out of the year,...