Two stories in the last week really chilled me: the likely collapse of the grizzlies in Canada, and the likely starvation of walruses in Alaska. Scared the hell out of me, because of what else I've been watching.
The grizzlies:
From The Guardian
First it was the giant panda, then the polar bear, now it seems that the grizzly bear is the latest species to face impending disaster. A furious row has erupted in Canada with conservationists desperately lobbying the government to suspend the annual bear-hunting season following reports of a sudden drop in the numbers of wild bears spotted on salmon streams and key coastal areas where they would normally be feeding. The government has promised to order a count of bears, but not until after this year's autumn trophy hunts have taken place. It has enraged ecology groups which say that a dearth of salmon stocks may be responsible for many bears starving in their dens during hibernation. The female grizzlies have their cubs during winter after gorging themselves in September on the fish fats that sustain them through the following months.
The walruses:
From Associated Press, via ADN:
Up to 200 dead walruses have been spotted on the shore of Chukchi Sea on Alaska's northwest coast... Environmental groups calling for measures to slow greenhouse gas emissions say walruses on shore are evidence that global warming is altering the Arctic and forcing major changes in wildlife behavior. The Center for Biological Diversity has petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list walruses as a threatened or endangered species because of the threat from sea ice loss, and the agency has opened a 60-day public comment period. Retreating sea ice might have taken away some of the platforms walrus use to hunt and rest, pushing to walrus to shore.
Via the ongoing Apocadocs project, we've been documenting predator depletion: starving polar bears and killer whales keep showing up; salmon, tuna, swordfish, shark, sea otters, and other marine predator numbers have plummeted in recent years.
It's a pretty straightforward equation: if the salmon come back in only 1/10 the numbers they did the year before, and the grizzly population can't get their seasonal fix of salmon, they'll starve to death in hibernation, or fail to reproduce.
If the walrus can't find enough fish to eat, because of our overfishing worldwide and in the North Seas (or if warmer waters are changing the balance of fish), then, well, they'll starve, or not be able to blubber themselves enough insulation to keep from freezing.
If the big fish (which are always predators) have fewer small fish to locate and consume -- because we humans have gotten so darned good at harvesting an ever-diminishing supply of biomass from the ocean for fish meal to feed to our farmed fish (or just to feed our hunger), then those big fish will starve, reproduce less, and wither away.
Some might say "Heck, great, more for us" -- more salmon, more fish available without those troublesome dolphins eating up our food... that's what has been said about wolves, and coyotes, and land-based predators.
But top predators are part of a balancing act of stability that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. Nature doesn't like instability.
And we're destabilizing systems willy-nilly without much thought to the consequences.
Biological balance is disrupted at our peril. The die-off of the northeast bat population results in an explosion of insects. The extermination of wolves results in a booming deer population that denudes forests. A die-off of any species is a tragedy, but a die-off of many will have confounding, even catastrophic consequences.
As I've said in other diaries -- we are at an "all hands on deck" moment. We have a handful of years, at most, to respond to the converging emergencies that are becoming apparent. Shaking our heads in dismay is not sufficient.
Building a societal consensus, built on awareness of these converging emergencies, is a precondition for any political change. Talk to your friends and neighbors, tweet about it, link to this stuff on Facebook.
The predator collapse is just one of the bevy of dead canaries on the mine floor.