The loss of arctic sea ice is bad for walrus populations, which means the walrus may soon be listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Though drops in walrus population haven't been documented, scientists and Natives are afraid the ripple effects of climate change could thin walrus numbers.
Walrus need to rest on sea ice no more than 400 feet above the ocean floor so they can dive down to eat shellfish and plants. But sea ice is retreating so far north that the waters are too deep for walrus to feed. This forces them to squeeze onto land, and last summer about 4,000 young walruses were trampled to death by males in the crowded conditions.
"On land, they are really vulnerable to predators and to being trampled by big males; when a human or polar bear shows up, they panic and stampede," said Shaye Wolf, a staff biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity, which is petitioning for an Endangered Species Act listing for the walrus.
The Center for Biological diversity is the same group that successfully petitioned the Fish & Wildlife Service to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the ESA.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Industry Groups Join Polar Bear Litigation:
- Can Polar Bears Save the World?
- Will Walruses Follow Polar Bears?
... seriously, the Endangered Species Act has been used as a weapon against the American economy for decades (spotted owl, anyone?) but only on local levels. The argument that species are threatened by "global warming", and so the government has the authority under the ESA to mandate nationwide actions to reduce or reverse this "warming", is an enormous and terrifying extension of leftist envirocommunism.
Although polar bears are strong swimmers, they are adapted for swimming close to the shore. Their sea journeys leave them them vulnerable to exhaustion, hypothermia or being swamped by waves.
Busby SEO Challenge
"To talk of many things:
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Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
Saint Hussein, if elected, will surely fix this by requiring all male walruses to take no trampling sensitivity training.
*Ahem*
Adapt or die.
Isn't this the complaint we have about leftists, that they draw their morality from Darwin and so end up embracing fascist ideologies? I mean, if we humans care for our own sick and weak and those with difficulty surviving, why not do it for species we want to preserve? It's not as if we conservatives say "Adapt or die!" to single mothers whose menfolk are dead or fled or imprisoned, or to old folks who've seen inflation and stock market fluctuations annihilate their retirement savings, or workers left unemployed by outsourcing...
... oh, wait, I guess we conservatives are Darwinists after all :)
No? We're supposed to care about certain species and subvert the evolutionary process? Well, damn.
Uh, because they've had to (over)crowd into the few remaining habitable areas?
That's actually a pretty common fate for species facing habitat destruction.