BBC Says Climate Change Is Already Killing Polar Bears. Maybe Not.

Some “science-affirmers” of man-made climate
change argue that melting Arctic Ocean sea
ice will doom polar bears. Why? Because the bears hunt seals on
the ice. No ice, no seals to munch on. It is true that the extent
of summer Arctic Ocean sea ice has been on a downward trend for the
past several decades, but how are polar bears really faring?

In its article, “Will
Polar Bears Become Extinct?,” the BBC reports:

“The best estimates we’ve got indicate that we’ll probably lose
somewhere around two-thirds of the world’s bears somewhere around
mid-century, just based on the simple fact that we’re losing sea
ice,” says Andrew Derocher, a professor of
biological sciences at the University of Alberta and past chair of
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN)
Polar Bear Specialist Group. …

In the Hudson Bay, when Derocher first started doing research in
the region there were 1200 bears. Now there are barely 800. “The
current status is the numbers have dropped by about a third,”
Derocher says. “It certainly doesn’t seem like it’s on a continuous
precipitous climb.”

However, in February 2014, other researchers published a study
in
Biological Conservation that found no firm evidence
for such a precipitous decline in the Hudson Bay region. In
addition, the Polar Bear Technical Committee of Environment Canada

published a map in June 2014 showing estimates of various
subpopulations of polar bears. The committee estimates there are
between 1, 000 and 1,500 bears in Western Hudson Bay (WH) and that
the population is likely stable. See map below.

Click on map link above for a larger map.

Keep in mind that counting wild animals in remote areas is
always a difficult and fraught enterprise and people are likely to
see what they want to see.

Hat tip to Marian Tupy and Matt Ridley.