[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by Pinner

Pretty sure ?

Just maybe all the Global warming propaganda has influenced everyone.

From your own article:

The service identifies six Arctic regions where data are insufficient to make a call on the population, including the aforementioned Baffin shores area.
Another six areas are listed as having stable counts, three experienced reduced numbers and two have seen their bears increase.

Obviously, a headline that picks an increasing subpopulation is more intriguing, but more subpopulations saw decreases than increases.

Besides, polar bears do live on ice and satellite photos show the sea ice is down 7.7% in the last decade. So something is happening up there.

It is warming, and that's not propaganda.

Propaganda goes both ways. While the cause of global warming is debatable to some, and there are motives on both sides, but climate data is showing that it is actually happening. The Hudson's Bay ice is breaking up earlier than it was 30 or 40 years ago. And the polar bear population in some areas are actually declining.

We analyzed data for polar bears captured from 1984 to 2004 along the western coast of Hudson Bay and in the community of Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. The Western Hudson Bay polar bear population declined from 1,194 (95% CI = 1,020–1,368) in 1987 to 935 (95% CI = 794–1,076) in 2004. Total apparent survival of prime-adult polar bears (5–19 yr) was stable for females (0.93; 95% CI = 0.91–0.94) and males (0.90; 95% CI = 0.88–0.91). Survival of juvenile, subadult, and senescent-adult polar bears was correlated with spring sea ice breakup date, which was variable among years and occurred approximately 3 weeks earlier in 2004 than in 1984. We propose that this correlation provides evidence for a causal association between earlier sea ice breakup (due to climatic warming) and decreased polar bear survival.

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2193/2006-180

Although some subpopulations of polar bears are seeing an increase, more are not. Although the population rebounded from over-hunting pre-1960s, more recently, more populations have seen declines that are largely attributed to the earlier loss of sea ice having an impact on hunting and migration.

Canada's Western Hudson Bay population: 22% decline since the early 1980s, directly related to earlier ice break-up on Hudson Bay.

• Southern Beaufort Sea population along the northern coast of Alaska and western Canada: decline in cub survival rates and in the weight and skull size of adult males; similar observations made in Western Hudson Bay prior to its population drop.

• Baffin Bay population, shared by Greenland and Canada: at risk from both significant sea ice loss and substantial over-harvesting.

• Chukchi Sea population, shared by Russia and the United States: declining due to illegal harvest in Russia and one of the highest rates of sea ice loss in the Arctic.

http://www.polarbearsinternational.o...-bears-survive

Of course, the truth lies somewhere in between. Things like the Northwest Passage being clear of ice in recent summers, along with climate data showing that the ice is breaking up earlier than ever before make it difficult to deny that the arctic is warming. Personally, I think that stricter controls on hunting have done more to save the population than anything else, but I don't think that it is alarmist to say that their habitat is changing and that parts of the polar bear population are showing declines.