climate

What’s happening with the Arctic’s marine mammals

Admiral Robert J. Papp on US leadership in the Arctic.

Editorial: Leona Aglukkaq, Conservative Canadian Member of Parliament for the riding of Nunavut and Minister for the Arctic

The arctic fox is a tough animal that can withstand harsh winter conditions. But the warmer climate has led to challenges that are far more difficult to tackle than 50 degrees below zero and weeks without food.

For people who have problems visualizing climate change, this is what it can look like in the Arctic – 35,000 walruses crowded onto an Alaskan beach, driven there by the loss of their preferred resting and feeding place on coastal ice.

A recent genetic study of polar bears suggests that past changes in climate helped shape the bears we know today.

Climate change would be called undeniable, if it wasn’t for the fact that so many people do deny it. In southern Alaska, large percentages of republican voters deny that it’s happening, according to a large phone survey conducted by the University of New Hampshire. The survey was presented here at the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences in Akureyri Iceland.

Mush! The only race in town this past week was the Yukon Quest, a grueling dog sled endurance race of 1,000 miles from Whitehorse to Fairbanks. Our WWF team, however, was in Alaska for a different kind of expedition – consulting with some of the world’s leading interdisciplinary science and social science researchers on Arctic climate change.

This year I had a unique opportunity while in town. PBI and Frontiers North Adventures premiered a new film by Zacharias Kunuk and Ian Mauro. The documentary was filmed in Inuktitut with English subtitles and is called Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change. Some of you may recognize Zach from his last award winning project, Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). This new work is a documentary recording Inuit elder perspectives on climate change across the Nunavut region of the Canadian high arctic. Along with the discussions on observed changes witnessed by elders and their concerns about the future, the film highlights some fairly direct and sometimes angry views around polar bears, conservation efforts, and the scientists who study this animal.

WWF is supporting a group of seven young people from the Arctic as they paddle a traditional canoe along the west coast of North America from Vancouver, Canada, to Neah Bay in the United States. As they progress along the coast, they are stopping in communities along the way to share their stories of the impacts of climate change in the homelands.