News of the North

Trophy hunters planning to decorate with polar bear rugs may be out of luck, as a proposed polar bear protection act will prevent American hunters from bringing protected species into the States. Currently, it is illegal to kill polar bears for sport in Alaska, but Greenland, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories have no such limitation and have even increased their quotas despite evidence suggesting the species is in decline.

Show your support for polar bears and other Northern wildlife at the NRDC's site.

Core samples taken from the Arctic Ocean seabed suggest that 55 million years ago, the Arctic Ocean was as warm as the beaches of Florida, with nearly tropical temperatures. This is around the time of the origin of primates on the planet. (However, the existence of Arctic monkeys has not been confirmed.) Currently, Arctic ice is at an all-time low, and may disappear entirely in around 20 years.

At the other end of the earth, Antarctica's Southern Ocean isn't pulling its weight. Previously one of the planet's most important absorbers of carbon dioxide, the ocean is failing to absorb as much CO2 as expected. This has been attributed to higher winds and temperatures caused by ozone depletion and climate change, which churns up the water and saturates the surface with CO2 rather than drawing it down to the deep ocean. Negotiations with the ocean are underway, but its demands are high: reduced carbon emissions from humanity.

If you haven't taken steps to help stop global warming, there's no time like the present.

We're pleased to welcome Paul Frame to News of the North. As a practicing wildlife biologist, Paul has worked for conservation throughout North America. He has spent time on the Western Great Lakes, Northern Rocky Mountain States, and the Mexican Wolf recovery programs. He also conducted field research in the Northwest Territories that focused on the response of denning wolves to human activity at both the local and landscape scales. Some of this research was the first to document barren-ground wolves of northern Canada traveling great distances from their pups at dens to hunt migratory caribou during summer. Analyses of these data are ongoing. Currently Paul is a wildlife biologist for the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in Iqaluit, Nunavut. One of the issues the Board is dealing with right now is how best to balance conservation of declining polar bear populations with the culturally and economically important Inuit harvest of the species. This is a tough enough task on its own, and recent trends in climate from and sea ice are making it a serious conservation challenge. You can find out more about the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board at www.nwmb.com.

Paul will be writing updates here about environmental happenings in the North and his experiences as a conservation biologist. Welcome, Paul!