First the polar bear report in the tabloid: How scientific is it when the report concedes that the "study" was commissioned by the Inuit-dominated government of Nunavit, which supports polar bear hunting and thus has a political stake in the outcome?:

Critics claim the government has an agenda to encourage polar bear hunting and keep the animals off the endangered species list.

In other news, cigarette companies still literally swear (as they did to Congess) that smoking is not even addictive. So there's that "science" too!

I believe this about covers Les's "Fair and Balanced" post. I urge him and any other skeptic to find his beef on this list and click on it.

The "polar bear baby boom" is one of the dumbest talking points to come down the pike. It started off in the WSJ with the claim that total numbers has quadrupled since the '60s, conveniently failing to mention that recreational hunting was banned in 1973.

Now we have the startling revelation that polar bears are thriving where there's still good habitat and abundant food. Wow. Whooda thunkit?

Pre-capture: The person referenced in this article has been working on polar bear population issues and species conservation since before changes in sea ice were becoming apparent.

From Polar Bears International:

Dr. [Andrew] Derocher is a polar bear scientist with the University of Edmonton in Canada and the Chair of the IUCN/SSC (World Conservation Union/Species Survival Commission) Polar Bear Specialist Group.

Question: The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has proposed that the polar bear be listed as a threatened species. Yet some news reports state that polar bear numbers are actually increasing. For example, the following paragraph appeared on the Fox News Web site:

"In the 1950s the polar bear population up north was estimated at 5,000. Today it's 20- to 25,000, a number that has either held steady over the last 20 years or has risen slightly. In Canada, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory of Canada has found that the population there has increased by 25 percent."

If this is true, then why are scientists worried about population declines?

Answer from Dr. Derocher: The various presentations of biased reporting ignore, or are ignorant of, the different reasons for changes in populations. If I thought that there were more bears now than 50 years ago and a reasonable basis to assume this would not change, then no worries. This is not the case.

The bottom line here is that it is an apples and oranges issue. The early estimates of polar bear abundance are a guess—there is no data at all for the 1950-60s. Nothing but guesses. We are sure the populations were being negatively affected by excess harvest (e.g., aircraft hunting, ship hunting,self-killing guns, traps, and no harvest limits). The harvest levels were huge and growing. The resulting low numbers of bears were due only to excess harvest but, again, it was simply a guess as to the number of bears.

After the signing of the International Agreement on Polar Bears in the 1970s, harvests were controlled and the numbers increased — there is no argument from anyone on this point. Some populations recovered very slowly (e.g., Barents Sea took almost 30 years) but some recovered faster. Some likely never were depressed by hunting that much, but the harvest levels remained too high and the populations subsequently declined. M'Clintock Channel is a good example. The population is currently down by over 60% of historic levels due only to overharvesting. Some populations recovered as harvests were controlled, but have since declined due to climate-related effects (e.g., Western Hudson Bay). In Western Hudson Bay, previously sustainable harvests cannot be maintained as the reproductive and survival rates have declined due to changes in the sea ice.

At this point, we lack quantitative data for an overall assessment of trend in Canada or Nunavut as a whole. There is, however, very strong evidence for a decline in Western Hudson Bay and the Southern Beaufort Sea based on quantitative studies. More recently, scientists working in the Southern Hudson Bay have reported a major decline in the condition of polar bears. A decline in condition was the precursor to the population decline in Western Hudson Bay. There is clear suggestion of a population decline due to over-harvest in Baffin Bay, Kane Basin and possibly Norwegian Bay.

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Recursive blogwhore.