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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 15318
[Environmental]
Date Posted:
4/16/2006
11:11:56 am EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 7,586
RSS: 19,663
Comments: 8
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Warming Arctic Is Taking A Toll
Author: Marc Kaufman Source: Washington Post
Title: WARMING ARCTIC IS TAKING A TOLL
The rapid melting of Arctic sea ice appears to be separating walrus young from their mothers, leaving them likely to die at sea, a team of researchers said.
During a two-month cruise off northern Alaska in 2004, a Coast Guard icebreaker came across nine lone walrus calves swimming in the deep waters -- what the scientists called a highly unusual sighting.
They report in the journal Aquatic Mammals that the pups most likely fell into the sea when a shelf of sea ice that they lived on with their mothers collapsed because of an influx of unusually warm water.
The team found that water flowing from the Bering Sea to the shallower continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea off northern Alaska was six degrees warmer than it had been at the same time and place two years earlier.
Additional Article Link: [Click HERE]
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Community Thoughts: There are 8 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Special Needs | Apr 16th. at 4:45:33 pm EDT
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
This is the proverbial tip of the melting iceberg when it comes to global warming. I'm sorry the pups were lost, but rescue means more than just pulling them out of the water. While the heart might be in the right place, most people that are out there are often scientists in other fields and have little practical knowledge about the care and feeding of the wildlife beyond the moment. Walrus pups, like seal pups, require a closeknit relationship with their mother and a special formula of heavy fat milk until weaning. If they are sundered too soon, their chances of survival are very slim- even with help, because of diseases and other maladies that often strike the very young in the first stages of life. Most places that can provide these services are too far away to reach and only the healthiest are likely to survive out of their element long enough to reach one, even if every care is taken. With the melting the way it is, any diseases that were dormant may be unleashed by the warmth and the wildlife that does survive will find itself hard put to do so. I'm sure that if there was a way- they would have been rescued, but if their habitat is changing-- it would have been only to captivity in a zoo or an exhibit, since their wild land would no longer be there. and they would have no way to survive otherwise.
If there is a cooling period after the warming trend- it'll be too late for the creatures already here that live in the cold-- and we will suffer too. Because our crops and methods of farming depend on the climate we have now. Even a minute change either up or down will make a tremendous difference. It seems we have equally special needs which render us as vulnerable, and just as less prone to survival.
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