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Monday, February 13, 2006
Lack of ice bad news
By JAMIE BAKER, The Telegram





For once, Paul Watson and sealers is this province have something they can agree on — the lack of ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is bad news for harp and hood seals.
As reported by The Telegram Saturday, there is no ice northeast of Prince Edward Island over to the Magdalene Islands, an area usually ice-blocked by February.

And without ice — besides affecting the hunt — there are fears in the scientific community it will wreak havoc on seal reproduction since many of the animals have their pups on the ice.

Watson, the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, who has made global headlines with his anti-seal-hunt protests, fears the situation could spell disaster.

“Seals need ice — there could be an incredible mortality if there’s no ice,” Watson told The Telegram.

“Global warming has always been a bigger concern — global warming is a threat to seals. One of the reasons we are opposed to this hunt for conservation reasons is ... because we need every seal we can get to combat the threat of global warming and climate change.”

Watson is not alone in his fear of declining ice — believe it or not, those on the other side of the sealing issue, namely sealers, feel the same way, although for somewhat different reasons.

Ludrick Crane of Cox’s Cove has been a fishermen for 25 years, and says the lack of ice this year, complete with unseasonable warmth and a lack of snow, is nothing short of startling.

“There’s not a bit of ice to be seen,” he said.

“Every other year by this time you can put bikes and Ski-Doos, even trucks and cars on it. There’s no seals when there’s no ice, so there’ll be none in here, I guess.

Ice ‘going down’

“The ice has been going down, down, down over the last few years, with the climate and everything else. How can seals have pups with no ice? Unless they’re a long ways out in P.E.I. somewhere, but I don’t hear talk of any right now.”

According to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), ice conditions comparable to this year’s have been recorded twice previously, in 1969 and 1981.

But there has been a dramatic downward spiral in the ice coverage in the Gulf: in 1990 it was just over 50 per cent, and this year is only six per cent.

Global warming

For his part, Watson said concerns attached to global warming are such that his organization plans to ramp up its efforts to tackle the problem — including pushing for another ship, to be named after former Greenpeace president, the late Robert Hunter.

“To me, the two biggest issues on the planet right now are global warming, and escalating human populations growth and the consumption of resources — those will ultimately have to be challenged to turn this thing around,” Watson said.

“When we go against the seal hunt or whaling, we are addressing symptoms of the bigger problem.”

At this point, a quota has yet to be announced for seals following the completion of the three-year management plan that concluded in 2005. There is also no official date set for the hunt to open.

Add to that the lack of ice, and Crane fears 2006 will be a less than banner year for the sealing industry in his area. The industry, province-wide, was worth just over $20 million in 2005, up from $15 million in 2004.

Season not looking good

“There’s a good dollar in seals and we’ve done pretty good with it, but this year it looks like there won’t be any around here,” he said.

“They may get a few later on, but right now and March they won’t get none there.

“After March, in April we start at the crab ... if it opens.”

Meanwhile, Watson indicated the Sea Shepherd’s ship, the Farley Mowat, would not be travelling to the floes for the seal hunt this year, after recently returning from “missions” in South Africa and Antarctica.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any protesting of the seal hunt.

“We’re watching it closely and if the ice is going to be there, and if it looks like there will be a hunt, we’ll go out with helicopters,” Watson said.

“It’s a little strange, because by this time of the year they should have a quota set. They are not giving anyone much chance to prepare for anything, including the fishermen themselves.”

Watson also promised that the 11 members of his organization convicted in mid-January of being too close to the hunt would turn what he sees as an unfair punishment into a potential payoff.

“Whenever they announce the first day of the hunt, our crew are going to be going to Charlottetown for a hunger strike and we’re collecting pledges for every day that they are in jail,” Watson said.

“The objective being that we will not pay a penalty; we will, instead, turn this to our advantage.”

jbaker@thetelegram.com

N.L. snowmobile accident leaves 1 dead, 2 missing
Last Updated Sun, 19 Mar 2006 13:47:26 EST
CBC News
The RCMP have recovered a body after four snowmobilers went through the ice off Newfoundland's northern coast and only one person managed to get out of the water safely.

Police arrived at the scene Saturday night after three snow machines carrying four people crashed into the icy water at Gill's Cove.

Heavy snow was falling at the time and may have caused the group to lose its way and head into an area where the ice was too thin, police said.

There had been warnings against travelling on most of the coastal ice because a milder-than-usual winter and ocean current had made it fragile.

Two firefighters who were helping search after the accident had to be rescued after they also fell through the ice.

Police recovered one body on Sunday morning.

The search for the two other missing people continued on Sunday.

No names have been released.

Seal Hunt in Canada Opens on Thin Ice
Scott Norris
for National Geographic News

March 24, 2006
Seal hunters and animal-rights activists may both be treading on thin ice this weekend, as Canada's annual harp seal hunt gets underway.

Shrinking sea ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in southeastern Canada (map) is adding a new twist to the controversial commercial seal harvest.




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Ice floes are sparser and thinner than normal this year in the waters north of Prince Edward Island, where hundreds of thousands of harp seals congregate each year to give birth to their pups.

As a result, hunters may be forced to pursue their quarry in the water as well as on ice.

In addition, protest groups planning to land helicopters on the ice to film the slaughter may have to change their tactics.

Some scientists fear the seals may face food shortages because of the poor ice, and young may be forced into the water before they are capable of prolonged ocean swimming.

Critics of the world's largest marine-mammal hunt had been calling for a reduced kill quota this year due to the warm winter conditions.

They were disturbed by the Canadian government's announcement last week that 325,000 harp seals could be killed—one of the highest totals ever.

In 1987 decades of protest culminated in a ban on the clubbing of white-furred harp seal pups in Canada. Now the protests are picking up steam again.

About a million harp seals have been killed over the past three years, mostly animals between 25 days and 13 months of age.

Although the youngest pups are protected, harp seals are weaned and lose their white coats when only two weeks old, making them fair game for hunters.

Ancient Tradition, Modern Politics

NYT - Polar bear becomes unlikely symbol of melting Arctic

http://www.iht.com/ar...

Polar bear becomes unlikely symbol of melting Arctic
By Clifford Krauss The New York Times

SUNDAY, MAY 28, 2006
RESOLUTE, Nunavut Bob Hudson says he has played in the Rose Bowl,
jumped out of airplanes, scuba dived off Fiji and stalked bighorn
sheep in the Rockies. But for all the excitement of his 67 years,
there was one thrill he still craved: hunting polar bear in the high
Canadian Arctic.

He sold his beloved Jaguar XKE on eBay for $26,000 to do it. After
heavy winds and snow dashed his hunt in April, he took another $14,000
out of his retirement account for a return trip this month.

"Life is short," Hudson said with a laugh. "The last check you write
should be to the undertaker, and it should bounce."

Hudson, a McDonald's franchise owner from Oxford, Mississippi, got his
trophy: a nine-foot bear bagged with a single shot from 30 yards. But
the future of polar bear hunting is far less certain for those who may
want to follow his tracks.

Polar bear hunting has gotten caught up in the larger debate over
global warming. Scientists and environmentalists are pushing for
measures to protect the animal, whose most immediate threat, they say,
is not hunters, but loss of habitat.

As its icy environs shrink, the polar bear has, improbably perhaps,
become the new poster face of Arctic vulnerability. Move over, baby
seal.

"People care about polar bears - they're iconic," noted Kassie Siegel,
a lawyer at the Center for Biological Diversity. "The reality of the
threat to polar bears is helping to get the word out" about the
effects of climate change.

Her group, along with Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense
Council, petitioned the U.S. government to list the polar bear as a
threatened species as a way to push the U.S. authorities to control
greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide from cars.

The message has alarmed American polar bear hunters, who could be
barred from bringing their trophies home from Canada, the only country
from which they can legally do so. It has also run up against
unbending opposition from local communities of Inuit, also known as
Eskimos, and the Nunavut territorial government, which has expanded
sport hunting in recent years.

For polar bear hunters, who are typically wealthy Americans past 50,
the trip in a caribou-skin suit on a dog sled is an age-defying
passage in a land of disorienting beauty, where the sun does not set
for months and nothing but a dreamy blue strip of sky distinguishes
ice from cloud.

For their Inuit guides, the sport hunt is a preserver of tradition and
a welcome source of income in snowbound settlements where jobs are
almost as scarce as trees.

But while the hunt may be unchanging, the globe's climate is not.

Global warming and overhunting could diminish the polar bear
population by at least 30 percent in coming decades, the International
Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, a network of
10,000 government and private scientists, predicted this month.

"Given what the climate models predict for continuing warming and
melting of sea ice, the whole thing leads to an extinction curve,"
said Peter Ewins, director of the World Wildlife Fund Canada's Arctic
Conservation Program. "And it's not a question of if, it's a clear
question of when."

Hunting, when insufficiently controlled, he added, "has the potential
to really compound the problem."

Nunavut increased its annual hunting quotas by 29 percent last year -
to 518 kills, an increase of 115 - saying that Inuit hunters were
actually seeing an increase in polar bear populations.

That impression, some scientists and environmentalists say, is simply
a matter of the bear's greater visibility, as shrinking ice pushes
them closer to Inuit communities.

Those experts tick off a list of stresses on the polar bear across
Arctic regions: Global warming is melting the bear's icy migration
routes, critical for breeding and catching seals for food, around
Hudson Bay and Alaska. Poaching is threatening populations in Russia.

Pollution is causing deformities and reproductive failures in Norway.

Other experts see a healthier population. They note that there are
more than 20,000 polar bears roaming the Arctic, compared with as few
as 5,000 40 years ago, before Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Soviet
Union and the United States agreed to strong restrictions on trophy
hunting in the 1970s.

Some scientists say northern polar bear populations are safe from
global warming, and those farther south might well find ways to adapt
or simply migrate north.

Mitchell Taylor, manager of wildlife research for the Nunavut
government, said warming trends have so far seriously affected only
the western Hudson Bay, just one of 20 areas where polar bears live.

He acknowledged that overhunting could be a problem in Baffin Bay,
between Canada and Greenland.

"In other areas, polar bears appear to be overabundant," he added.

In Canada, a committee of scientists recommended in 2003 that the
government list the polar bear as a species of "special concern,"
which would require federal monitoring. But the environment minister
sent the recommendation back, under pressure from the Nunavut
government. Meanwhile, officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
expect to rule in December on whether the polar bear should be
designated as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

the following article from globeandmail.com, Canada's leading source for
online news:

"Atlantic walrus at risk, scientists say"
Iconic buck-toothed mammal is declining in numbers due to overhunting,
says a group of Canadian scientists.
<http://www.theglobean...