Climate change still biggest risk to polar bears, international group says

The IUCN Red List says climate change continues to pose a major threat to polar bears. (FILE PHOTO)

Less than two weeks before the start-up of the COP 21 United Nations climate change conference in Paris, a big global conservation network says climate change remains the “most serious threat to polar bear survival.”

The numbers of polar bears could be reduced by 30 per cent, said the latest update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” of threatened Species, released Nov. 19.

“Governments meeting at the climate summit in Paris later this month will need to go all out to strike a deal strong enough to confront this unprecedented challenge,” said Inger Andersen, the director general of the IUCN, with more than 1,200 government and non-government member organizations.

After its re-assessment, the IUCN kept the polar bear listed as “vulnerable” on its “red list” of species.

The IUCN Red List now includes 79,837 assessed species, of which 23,250 are threatened with extinction.

For its re-assessment of the polar bear, the IUCN looked at sea ice and population data to project changes in polar bear populations.

“The results show that there is a high probability that the global polar bear population will decline by more than 30 per cent over the next 35 to 40 years,” the IUCN stated.

The IUCN cited sea ice projections, which say large regions of the Canadian Arctic islands will be ice free for more than five months by the late 21st century.

This will reduce habitat and increase the incidence of disease for species such as seals, “placing the polar bear at further risk,” the IUCN said in its news release.

“It is encouraging that polar bear range states have recently agreed on a Circumpolar Action Plan — the first global conservation strategy to strive for the long-term persistence of polar bears in the wild. IUCN is actively working with those countries, providing scientific data and advice to help implement the agreed plan in the most efficient and cohesive way possible. We truly hope that the action plan will make a difference for polar bear conservation,” said Dag Vongraven, chair of IUCN’s Polar Bear Specialist Group, in the release.

Along with polar bears, the IUCN also looked at 29 fungi (mushrooms), more than doubling the number on the IUCN Red List. The main threats affecting these mushrooms are “habitat loss and degradation, mostly from changing land use practices.”

A total of 24 newly assessed “critically endangered” species are possibly extinct, the IUCN said, primarily due to threats from invasive species and habitat destruction.

These include the Haha, a plant species native to the island of Kauai, Hawaiʻi, is listed as “Possibly Extinct.”

“Its habitat is threatened by pigs and several invasive plant species, and there have been no recorded sightings since 1998,” the IUCN said.