quotas

Reducing Polar Bear Attacks

April 8, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The increasing reduction of sea ice in the Arctic is changing the behavior of polar bears. Because they are spending more time on land, they are interacting with people much more frequently, occasionally with deadly results.

A study, published in 2017, looked at 144 years’ worth of polar bear attacks on humans in the Arctic. Between 1960 and 2009, there were a reported 47 attacks by polar bears on people – between 7 and 12 per decade. Between 2010 and 2014, as sea ice reached record lows, there were 15 attacks, a record for a four-year period. Since 2000, 88% of attacks have occurred between July and December, when sea ice is at its lowest level of the year.

Last July, a young male polar bear attacked and killed a man who was berry picking with his children. A month later, a mother polar bear attacked and killed an Inuit hunter and injured two others. This was the first known fatal attack by a mother polar bear.

As a result, Inuit communities in the Nunavut region are asking for higher legal polar bear harvest quotas, arguing that bear populations have increased to a dangerous level.

These recent human fatalities have also provided an impetus for developing new non-lethal conflict-resolution tools than can be used in northern communities before more people as well as bears are killed.

There are now polar bear patrol teams tasked with driving bears away from settlements. There is a bear hotline and electric fencing around sled dog compounds.

The changing face of the Arctic is creating growing stress on the polar bear population and on the people who make their home in that region.

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As Polar Bear Attacks Increase in Warming Arctic, a Search for Solutions

Photo, posted September 28, 2015, courtesy of Anita Ritenour via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Japan And Whaling

January 10, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The commercial hunting of whales nearly drove the giant mammals to extinction. By the 1960s, as hunting technologies improved and ships began to resemble floating factories, it became clear that whaling could not continue unchecked.

But despite all this, commercial whaling was never actually banned. Instead, in 1986, members of the International Whaling Committee (IWC) agreed to a whaling moratorium in order to allow whale stocks to recover. Pro-whaling nations like Japan, Iceland, and Norway expected the moratorium to be temporary until the whales stocks recovered, and a consensus on catch quotas could be established. But the temporary moratorium became a quasi-permanent ban, much to the delight of conservationists and to the dismay of whaling nations.

As a result, Japan recently announced it is leaving the international agreement and plans to resume commercial whaling. The agreement though never really stopped Japanese whaling in the first place, because it allowed the country to kill whales for scientific research. Japan has had an annual Antarctic catch quota of 333 minke whales, producing notoriously little in terms of whale science while producing lots of whale meat. As part of its withdrawal from the IWC, Japan will cease its Antarctic hunts and limit whalers to its own waters. Commercial Japanese whaling will resume in July.

Once popular in Japan, whale meat consumption has plummeted, falling 98% between 1962 and 2016. The industry employs fewer than 1,000 people and is dependent on government subsidies.

Many governments and conservationist groups condemned Japan’s withdrawal, declaring the move out of step with the international community. They argue that, rather than hunting whales, urgent action is needed to conserve marine ecosystems.

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Web Links

Japan to Resume Commercial Whaling, Defying International Ban

Photo, posted February 5, 2009, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cod And Global Warming

December 3, 2015 By WAMC WEB

Atlantic cod has been the basis of a major fishing industry in the Gulf of Maine for centuries and is a key species in the local ecosystem. Overfishing decimated the population of cod and in 2010, fisheries managers imposed a series of restrictions on harvesting the fish in order to try to help the species to rebound.