Polar Bears May Have Only Decades Left - AFP

[hatrack]

LONGYEARBYEN, Svalbard, Norway (AFP) Jul 28, 2004
"There are today nearly as many polar bears as people in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, a mere 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the North Pole, but experts fear that balance is about to shift as the white king of the ice roams steadily towards extinction.
Theoretically a protected species, the polar bear has in practice been exposed to an increasing number of man-made perils, leading researchers to worry that it could be completely extinct in just a matter of decades. "There's a big risk of losing the polar bear altogether," said Kit Kovacs, a Canadian who heads up bio-diversity research at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

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Even before the bans on dangerous substances like PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) really start paying off, a flurry of other dangerous substances like mercury and brominated flame retardants have begun posing a significant threat to the king of the ice. To researchers' astonishment, traces of flame retardants -- used in abundance in the electronics, textile and automobile industries -- have recently been found in Svalbard polar bears for the first time.

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While the direct effects of these substances remain unclear, researchers suspect that they at the very least seriously damage the bears' immune system as well as their ability to reproduce. Over recent years, for instance, a number of "pseudo-hermophrodite" polar bears -- females with such protruding sexual organs that they resemble penises -- have begun appearing. The substances "get into the food chain, first in the algae. The algae get eaten by the small fish, the small fish get eaten by the bigger fish, the big fish get eaten by the seals and the seals get eaten by the bears," Otnes said.

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As the ice disappears, the bears will be forced to swim longer distances to get to new hunting ground, something that will be difficult for cubs, researchers say. The effort of crossing larger bodies of water is also expected to detract from the adult bears' sex drive and thereby their ability to reproduce. The diminishing ice has already claimed three potential victims. A mother polar bear and her two young cubs are currently stranded on Bjoernoeya ("Bear Island" in Norwegian) in the Svalbard archipelago after being caught off guard by a rapid ice melt this spring."

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http://www.terradaily.com/2004/040728025901.hzoy48ym.html

[smelcher]

1. Nice article

the raw numbers of the loss of population is, what, shocking. and the detail of postmortems describing the amounts of toxins found in their system is a real eye opener

[hatrack]

2. Similar to POP numbers for seals, and esp. whales nt

.

[norwalk]

3. POP ?

please elaborate?

[hatrack]

4. POP - Persistent Organic Pollutant

They're also sometimes referred to as endocrine mimics, since they can replace and/or interfere with hormones and reproductive processes.

http://www.chem.unep.ch/pops/case01.html

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

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[hatrack]

6. Here's a few additional articles & links

http://www.chem.unep.ch/pops/POPs_Inc/press_releases/TOL-1.htm

http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/pae/es_map/articles/article_14.mhtml

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hecs-sesc/tsri/pollutants.htm

This last link is probably the best - a Health Canada connection to a bunch of studies on different animals in different regions.