Declining Number Of Polar Bears, Penguins, & Amphibian Populations

© WWF, Where Polar Bears Live

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature lists toxic pollution, oil exploration, and hunting, as well as climate change, as the threats polar bears face.

Polar bears are found throughout the circumpolar Arctic on pack ice, along or near coasts, and on islands:

The situation has become dire enough for the Bush Administration in the US to propose to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The polar bear depends on sea ice. (Source: Wikipedia)

This itself is an interesting turn of events as the Bush Administration has typically been reluctant to acknowledge concerns about climate change, and a lot of lobbying by environmental groups has led to this proposal.

Earlier in 2006, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) had already put the polar bear on their Red List of Threatened Species.

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Declining Number Of Penguins?

A concern about crashing numbers of a particular species of penguin in recent years, the rockhoppers, shows that there may be numerous complicated factors causing this, and it is not always easy to know for sure. In the Falkland Islands alone, the species numbers have dropped from 600,000 to 420,000 in just 6 years, and down from 1.5 million in 1932. But from all their habitats millions have recently vanished.

Scientists are struggling to wonder whether it is starvation due to overfishing, climate change, a combination, or some other factors affecting this species.

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Declining Amphibian Populations

The Golden Toad of Monteverde, Costa Rica was among the first casualties of amphibian declines. Formerly abundant, it was last seen in 1989. (Source: Wikipedia)

Amphibians are particularly sensitive to changes in the environment. Amphibians have been described as a marker species or the equivalent of “canaries of the coal mines” meaning they provide an important signal to the health of biodiversity; when they are stressed and struggling, biodiversity may be under pressure. When they are doing well, biodiversity is probably healthy.

Unfortunately, as has been feared for many years now, amphibian species are declining at an alarming rate.

As described further on this site’s biodiversity section, causes for such an alarming rate of decline is not entirely natural.