Mush! The only race in town this past week was the Yukon Quest, a grueling dog sled endurance race of 1,000 miles from Whitehorse to Fairbanks. Our WWF team, however, was in Alaska for a different kind of expedition – consulting with some of the world’s leading interdisciplinary science and social science researchers on Arctic climate change.
Co-authored by Hussein Alidina, Peter Ewins and James Snider
Enter the world of RACER – a project of WWF’s Global Arctic Programme that seeks to identify important places in the Arctic in the face of rapid climate change. RACER stands for (deep breath) Rapid Assessment of features and areas for Circumarctic Ecosystem Resilience in the 21st Century.
For the past 18 months, a RACER team of WWF staff from Norway, Russia, USA and Canada have been reviewing key papers, consulting with experts, commissioning analyses, holding workshops, compiling digital maps and crunching data – all to develop the analyses that will identify some of the key places that will remain important for the well-being of arctic ecosystems and human communities as we experience climate change. Continue reading
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It’s not too late to save polar bears: study
By Clive Tesar
A new paper published in Nature magazine suggests that reductions in greenhouse gases would be effective in saving polar bear populations from the worst effects of climate change. The report says that the bears’ arctic sea ice habitat is most likely to decline in a linear fashion, showing a direct correlation between greenhouse gas levels, higher temperatures, and ice melting.
Some previous studies had suggested that there might be a tipping point in the arctic sea ice, leading it to suddenly disappear once a certain level of greenhouse gases and temperature rise had been reached. One of the report authors, Steve Amstrup of Polar Bears International says the new conclusion means there is still hope for polar bears. Continue reading
This amazing part of Manitoba
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the ninth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
Our day starts early at Cape Churchill following a long day of travel and a late night getting the camp up and running. The temperature has dropped dramatically in the last few days and is now around -27 C with winds gusting up to 60 km/hr. This adds a wind chill factor of nearly -48 C (at -40, centigrade and Fahrenheit are the same). BJ Kirschhoffer, Director of Field Operations for PBI, and I still have a few things to take care of regarding the remote communications system at the Cape. If everything works as planned this morning, I have an 8 AM interview with Norwegian Public Radio. We head out in the dark on our Tundra Buggy to the Cape Tower, an old observation platform originally set up by Dr. Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service. BJ needs to connect a new battery pack to the repeater system and we’ll also deploy a small generator for recharging the system during the week. Continue reading
Heading for Cape Churchill
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the eighth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
Wagons ho! It’s moving day and the morning starts a good hour earlier. By 7 AM we are fed and aboard our tour buggies. It’s still dark as we head out on the tundra hoping for that perfect sunrise bear. And as luck would have it – we find him …
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A picture’s worth a thousand words…
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the seventh blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
An exceptional two days of bear viewing in the Manitoba Wildlife management area. I’ll let the bears speak for themselves here:
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What a day!
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the sixth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
It’s the first day out for our new group and I am amazed and happy to look out on the Bay at first light – ice is forming well out onto the tidal flats! This is a stark change from just five days ago when we flew over this same area during our coastal survey and saw only open water. The Wildlife Management Area just east of Churchill is unique and protected for this very reason – ice forms and is retained along this part of the coast early in the winter and remains late in the spring. This is also why so many polar bears remain, or migrate into this area in the late autumn as they await their opportunity to return to the sea ice. Continue reading
Venturing into Wapusk National Park
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the fifth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
Today I’m joining a special group of visitors from Germany led by a colleague from their WWF home office. WWF Germany, in partnership with Wick’s (the company many of us know as Vick’s), has become a funding partner of the WWF Global Arctic Program and our polar bear conservation efforts. We are all very lucky to be joining Frontiers North Adventures for their final trip of 2010, and the only trip that is permitted into Wapusk National Park and all the way to Cape Churchill.
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An opportunity arises that was unexpected …
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the fourth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
A snowstorm at last and it looks like winter may ultimately be arriving. Flights are cancelled or delayed and it’s finally looking a lot more like the sub-arctic.
As sometimes happens when you are at the right place and at the right time, an opportunity arises that was unexpected. Continue reading
Documenting Inuit elder perspectives on climate change
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the third blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
This year I had a unique opportunity while in town. PBI and Frontiers North Adventures premiered a new film by Zacharias Kunuk and Ian Mauro. The documentary was filmed in Inuktitut with English subtitles and is called Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change. Some of you may recognize Zach from his last award winning project, Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). This new work is a documentary recording Inuit elder perspectives on climate change across the Nunavut region of the Canadian high arctic. Along with the discussions on observed changes witnessed by elders and their concerns about the future, the film highlights some fairly direct and sometimes angry views around polar bears, conservation efforts, and the scientists who study this animal.
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Making connections on the tundra
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the second blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’ – here is his first blog.
By Geoff York
My first week in the town of Churchill is focused around meetings with partners and scientists, so this is very much a working trip for me. Many of you may ask, why Churchill? WWF has long supported polar bear research efforts in the Hudson Bay region going back to the early 1970’s. We continue that direct support today, helping to maintain one of the best long term research and monitoring efforts on polar bears anywhere in the world. You can see tangible results of the current support via our online Polar Bear Tracker. This long term research has provided some of the clearest links between changes in polar bear population dynamics directly tied to changes in climate and sea ice.
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