Guardian UK: Global warning: Melting ice threatens Arctic foxes

[marmar]

Global warning: Melting ice threatens Arctic foxes
David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday July 15, 2008



Polar bears may not be the only Arctic wildlife threatened by global warming. Scientists have discovered that Arctic foxes also struggle as the ice disappears because they rely on the frozen seas to survive the bleak winters.

Researchers tracked the movements of 14 young foxes as they faced their first Arctic winter in northern Alaska, where the temperature plunges to -30C and it is dark for 24 hours a day. Only three animals survived the winter, by wandering hundreds of miles across the frozen sea ice looking for seal carcasses left by polar bears. The 11 foxes that remained on the mainland perished.

The scientists said taking to the ice could help foxes survive because there were fewer predators and food was easier to find than on land. But they said the discovery raised new concerns over the foxes' survival in the face of diminishing Arctic ice cover. Sea ice in the Arctic region, formed from frozen seawater, has shrunk dramatically in recent years and could reach a new record low this summer.

Experts said this week that this year's ice melt season has started sooner than usual.

Nathan Pamperin, a scientist at the department of biology and wildlife at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who led the Arctic fox study, said: "With reduced access to sea ice, it is possible that, in the years when foxes would normally travel on the ice, they may face tougher conditions on land, and possibly lower survival."

He said it was known that Arctic foxes use sea ice - polar explorers have reported tracks close to the north pole - but that the team did not expect to see the animals spend so long on the ice so far from the coast. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/15/climatechange.wildlife

[XemaSab]

1. I got lost on the first sentence

"Polar bears may not be the only Arctic wildlife threatened by global warming."

As we say in my homeland: "Like, duh."

[FREEWILL56]

2. How about these animals, both 4 and 2 legged?

http://green.yahoo.com/news/ap/20080714/ap_on_re_as/russia_polar_station.html

MOSCOW - Russian scientists are evacuating a research station built on an Arctic ice floe because global warming has melted the ice to a fraction of its original size, a spokesman said.

The North Pole-35 station, where 21 researchers and two dogs live in huts, will be taken off the floe in the western Arctic Ocean this week instead of in late August as originally planned, said Sergei Balyasnikov of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg.

The research crew landed in early September on the 1.2- by 2.5-mile floe near the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. During its westward drift of more than 1,550 miles, the floe shrank to just 1,000 by 2,000 feet.

"The evacuation is ahead of schedule because of global warming," Balyasnikov said.



Even the Russians admit to global warming, but not our asshole in charge.

[XemaSab]

3. I've been reading articles for the last 15 years about seabirds and other birds

that nest in the high arctic.

I'm sure every animal up there, from polar bears to smelt, will be winners or losers. :shrug: