Polar Bears

[Venetia]

Here's one for you:

Polar Bears.

According to the WWF, about 20 distinct polar bear populations exist, accounting for approximately 22,000 polar bears worldwide. Of those populations (categorized as "sub-populations" per region), some are far more endangered than others.

The polar bear, over the years, has flip-flopped between being endangered and threatened. Their numbers within the past 5 years have suddenly dropped though, in certain sub-populations.

This is almost entirely due to climate shift. Their habitats are dwindling and their food sources are moving to different territories.

Now, there are several HUGE initiatives in place to maintain the polar bear population.

However, I ask: Is this counter-intuitive to maintaining nature?

If something dies because of a global change--if there is something so FINELY adapted to ONLY a single habitat and DIES in anything but--is it our prerogative to protect and replenish that species or should we allow nature to run its course?

You can argue for replenishing a species that was killed off mainly due to our direct actions. Deforestation, hunting, etc. --- i.e., leaving the planet as if we'd never fucked it up for the past few hundred years.

It can be argued that we are partially to blame for the increasing climate trend--that is commonly believed in the scientific world now. However the amount is purely speculative, and it's been nearly proven that the planet has been on a warming trend since the ice age thousands of years ago.

So, one could say that, this warming trend, though it has been sped up, was inevitable. It could be said that polar bears--something so highly specialized that it effectively doomed itself to a ticking clock--would have died out eventually anyway.

Is our intervention really what's best for the planet? If something is designed to die out and we refuse to let it happen then are we doing more harm than good?

Consider also, the polar bear is one of the only large predators in each subspecies' area---but the problem is that their prey, the caribou and seals, mainly---are highly adaptive and will be fine with moving south when the time comes.

What's more, deeper than only polar bears--what side of the fence are you on? Do you believe intervention is the best solution on plants and animals that are dying out due to natural causes, or do you feel that we should only focus on sustaining the populations of the animals we are directly affecting and let nature run its course elsewhere?

 

[OrbitDuke]

If the polar bears were gone, Coca-Cola Company would be unable to use then in their winter advertisements!

But really, are they designed to die? Isn't part of the reason why intervention is needed is because we have kind of introduced/sped up the situation ourselves?
If we argue global warming was going to come at a slower rate before we got around and started spewing chemicals everywhere and warming the planet up, maybe the polar bears would have adapted to their surroundings much more successfully than they have now, perhaps.

 

[Venetia]

It would take hundreds of thousands of years, at the very least, for something so keenly adapted to shift toward being suited for more flexible temperatures/ecosystems, in such a huge way. Even if we sped up the warming trend we very likely did not speed it up THAT much.

Though that argument is wildly opinion-based and I don't have any hard facts or anything ATM to back myself up. But evolution takes a very long time and it is not even probable that the species would weather the shift at the ass-end of the next hundred thousand years anyway. Species rise up and die out all the time, it's just a by-product of evolution: over-adaptation.

Think about it. The polar bear would need to develop the ermine-like ability of changing fur color based on the season. They would need to lose a LARGE portion of their fatty deposits and be able to pack it on and take it off with the efficiency of a grizzly bear. They would need to become less hostile socially to weather more territorial overlap among its own kind. They would need to adapt to entirely new food sources. We're talking about asking them to change into a COMPLETELY different bear within a few thousand years--it's just HUGELY improbable.

 

[nikki]

I am actually pleasantly suprised at this. I had you pegged for one of those al gore "we are killing the polar bear" types. (You and just about everyone else on this forum lol) Although I do agree that spewing vast amounts of chemicals into the air is not a good thing.

Honestly, I never gave the polar bear issue any consideration. I just dont care much about polar bears, really. They dont affect my life in any way. And Al gore is a douche, so I reject just about everything that comes out of his mouth. "the icecaps are melting, so we need to become socialist" Why cant politicians go extinct instead? Then we could have cute polar bears as our leaders.

 

[Venetia]

I'm about to start studying to be a wildlife biologist with the pursuit of maintaining/cataloging endangered wildlife actually ... So yes, I AM one of those "save the planet ;o;" hippies. But the difference is that I'm concerned that we're funneling money into projects that are unnecessary when the money could be placed elsewhere that needs it a lot more.

For example: the Right Whale. It was hunted by us down to only approx. 250 specimens left. 250! It was once one of the most prolific baleen whales in the sea. They are a HUGE boon to their ecosystem. They filter the ocean of plankton and krill while providing nutrients for bottom-dwellers (waste) and they provide mini-habitats for small symbiotic fish that live off the algae and barnacle deposits of its body (not to mention the shelter).

The strange-looking Aye-Aye creature of Madagascar's numbers are dwindling at an alarming rate and as of now there are only 2500 left. Why? Hunting and mass deforestation. They de-louse trees of insects that burrow in and kill canopy growth.

The Anatolian Leopard also suffers poaching and loss of habitat. They are one of the ONLY predators in their occupying areas of Turkey.

But no one knows about these animals and no one cares, so we give generously to maintain a population of bears that does comparatively little to affect its ecosystem (orcas maintain the seal population and other species of bear and also humans pick off caribou in large numbers when they migrate south, and arctic foxes and wolves pick off everything that's a lot smaller).

It's a waste and we need to conserve our resources for what can be considered more worthy causes is what I'm saying :/

 

[nikki]

No, I totally expected you to be sort of an environmentalist/hippie. What Im suprised at is that you have an actual opinion and dont just tow the line Im so used to hearing. I definitely like leopards more than bears, so yeah lets save those instead!

Seriously though, I dont want them to go extinct but you really do make some great points. I think politicians use the polar bear as an excuse to pass all sorts of regulations on corporations and even on normal citizens. Regulations which they have been wanting to pass for a long time, long before the ice caps was an issue.

 

[Glitchfinder]

This is an interesting issue, and one that need thinking to decide. But, let me point out a few things. I live in California, and we've tried to maintain nature "as it should be" in the past. The result was a massive buildup of flammable material throughout the majority of the southwest, when firefighters doused every fire they could, as fast as it could.

This buildup of material has led to massive fires, ones big enough that their heat wells create enough wind to speed them along and keep them moving. One of the first of these destroyed a great deal of woodland in and around Yellowstone National Park.

Now, it has since been determined that in many of the western woodlands, forest fires are a natural parts of the biological cycle, clearing out undergrowth and old or dead trees, and making way for new life. Add on to that the fact that many species of tree, most notably a few species of pine, will not sprout from seed unless a fire burns the area and destroys a natural covering on the seed, and you have even more problems.

So now, firefighters intentionally set fires in areas deemed safe to do so (as in, that have had that massive buildup of brush cleared by a fire in the past, and that is now ready to be burned again), and they monitor and control these fires, so that they don't get out of control and burn too much. As a general rule, a fire going through a healthy ecosystem burns through fast enough that most of the healthy plant life is left alone, with the exception of ground cover.

So yeah. I'm for letting nature do it's thing with the polar bear. I mean, yeah, they are cool, but they also cannot survive on the current natural trend. We can keep them alive in zoos if we want, but if they die out in the wild, I'm not going to support direct intervention to preserve them.

 

[Truly else]

On a similar and somewhat related note, The crown-of-thorns sea star was endangered, but once the population rose, everything else started dying. Sometimes there is a reason for low populations, but I'm not implying this is the case, I'm just bringing this up because it could be useful to compare.

 

[Guest]

;D

 

[moog]

I am actually pleasantly suprised at this. I had you pegged for one of those al gore "we are killing the polar bear" types. (You and just about everyone else on this forum lol) Although I do agree that spewing vast amounts of chemicals into the air is not a good thing.

Honestly, I never gave the polar bear issue any consideration. I just dont care much about polar bears, really. They dont affect my life in any way. And Al gore is a douche, so I reject just about everything that comes out of his mouth. "the icecaps are melting, so we need to become socialist" Why cant politicians go extinct instead? Then we could have cute polar bears as our leaders.

Thanks for this totally relevant post. I also like how you squeezed in that indirect insult gj man

 

[nikki]

Thanks for this totally relevant post. I also like how you squeezed in that indirect insult gj man

Im just sayin, I was suprised. Theres an awful lot of people out there willing to accept whatever crap the liberal of the moment has to say at face value, no questions asked. I have actually come to expect that sort attitude, especially on the net.

 

[Ellie]

Im just sayin, I was suprised. Theres an awful lot of people out there willing to accept whatever crap the liberal of the moment has to say at face value, no questions asked. I have actually come to expect that sort attitude, especially on the net.

But it is true that we're killing the polar bears. (Or that they are dying out, at least)

The question is whether that matters or not.

 

[OrbitDuke]

i had no idea we were talkin' about Al Gore, I thought we were talkin' 'bout those bears and if it mattered if we did anything or not.

 

[gunga1]

but the problem is that their prey, the caribou and seals, mainly---are highly adaptive and will be fine with moving south when the time comes.

This is why we need the polar bears alive. Those seals and caribou eat fish, no? Having them eat fish that they weren't eating before would alone cause a lot of business to go down, but would also cause a big shift in the food chain everywhere, since suddenly there's less of some fish and consequently more another and so forth, causing a need for US to adapt. Which is troublesome.

So basically we don't want rapid changes in the environment because those require for rapid responses from us. This is especially concerning right now as the global economy is in a suboptimal position to respond...

...Is what my intuition says, not an economist or biologist.


Also as far I know evolutionary processes tend to drive species towards this state of extreme niche-specialisation, especially in such extreme habitats where the habitat itself is a large factor in survival, so we might be in for a lot worse in the future.

 

[Venetia]

caribou don't eat fish, they eat tundra grass o.O

seals (pinnipeds) do ... but their main predators are orca, not polar bears. it'd be a wiser investment to conserve killer whales ... which also at a similar level of flip-flopping between endangered and threatened. orca prey on damn near everything. they're the black and white police of the sea.

and being out-fished by seals is hardly an economic concern for america.

 

[Vadon]

I saw a commercial with Noah Wyle telling me I need to save the polar bear and I can't resist his wily ways.

But seriously, I'm about to touch on a lot of fields I'm not even remotely qualified to speak with authority on. But this is the internet, so I'm going to do it anyway.

I'm one of those dime-a-plenty liberals on the interwebs, but I think this issue does merit some deeper consideration. Both the number of polar bears and the size of their climate decreasing are documented facts. I choose to chalk this up to global warming and believe that humanity has played a huge role in our current climate change. But that's not what this debate is about.

Whether or not we should intervene is a different, and in my opinion, more compelling question. Before looking at the issue pragmatically, I'd rather start with the desirability of such an action. If there's no moral imperative, why try to figure out how to save them? I fall into the camp of people that believes if there is a problem, if it is in your power to stop it, and if you remain complacent, then you've done a bad thing. Now, I recognize that there are issues that don't effect folks directly, and these folks tend to take a more realist self-interested approach to the issue. (Or, in their view, non-issue.) But I personally can't stomach the idea that folks would willingly allow others to suffer when they're capable of making a difference. A girl who's gangraped outside of her prom, yet no one calls the police because it's not their problem, or the historic example of Kitty Genovese* demonstrate to me that while people do act with self-interest, they're wrong in doing so. Sure, while folks aren't legally culpable for such complacency, I think they're morally liable. So when we come to the question of polar bears, I think we should (if it is in our power to do good) intervene on those grounds alone, regardless of if we're the cause of the climate change or not.

But there is that final quandary that I don't know how to answer; that is the question of whether we're even capable of helping them. Venetia brings a good point that going against nature could have some dire consequences. For example, the policy in the US with regard to wildfires was to put every single one out. Little did we know that stopping all the fires would result in a strong undergrowth in forests that adds tons of fuel for flames. Now when we get a forest fire, it devastates the landscape and is downright gargantuan.

My point is that yeah, if we can, we should try to save the polar bears. If we can't, we can't and that's that. But if we save them, we must be aware of the consequences our actions bear upon the global biological system.

*Granted, the neighbors didn't see 'all' the events in Kitty's case, but the fact that no one called the police is unsettling.

 

[nikki]

Im not the most eloquent person around. When I think something is stupid, I dont bother trying to come up with logical rationizations for my opinion. Its stupid because its stupid.

Worrying about polar bears is stupid. Theres much more important things in life. Its stupid that some people are more concerned about the fate of some animal than the suffering of other people. i could never feel justified donating money to wildlife funds, when I could donate it to feed the children instead.

 

[gunga1]

caribou don't eat fish, they eat tundra grass o.O

seals (pinnipeds) do ... but their main predators are orca, not polar bears. it'd be a wiser investment to conserve killer whales ... which also at a similar level of flip-flopping between endangered and threatened. orca prey on damn near everything. they're the black and white police of the sea.

and being out-fished by seals is hardly an economic concern for america.

Oh yes... Caribou is some sort of deer creature isn't it, as I said I'm not an expert on this by any means.

Being directly out-fished is obviously of no concern for most people, except maybe some isolated inuits. The thing that concens me is that they stumble upon a nice little breeding ground for some fish and decide to stick around, killing the adults before they get the chance to procreate or killing the young before they can take care of themselves. Then those fish aren't eating the plankton or whatever they usually eat and all sorts of imbalances appear, killing more and more populations.

Now obviously this is a hypothetical scenario that would require like a mass exodus of seals, but it's really the only PRACTICAL reason I can think of, and I don't feel like going into the morality of it right now...


But of course conserving the creatures could spawn such imbalances as well... Especially with something like the orca which in my little knowledge just eats everything it sees.

 

[Guest]

;D

 

[Venetia]

:/
we live in the world too, in its ecosystem.
just let come what may to all endangered wildlife and the ecosystem collapses.
which directly affects us.
because we live in it.
even if you don't give a shit about animals and you only care about the wellbeing of humanity, it's still a pressing issue.

buuttt it's my lifelong dream to preserve wildlife, not yours, and you're entitled to your opinion. i can't convince you of otherwise but there're still enough people out there who care to keep shit going.