By  Amarachi Orie, CNN

09 Sept, 2023

Polar bears were listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2008 but have not benefited from emissions-related protections - Erinn Hermsen/Polar Bears International

Scientists say they have found a link between human-related greenhouse gas emissions and polar bear reproduction and survival rates for the first time in a new study, potentially overcoming a barrier to protecting the species.

Polar bears live in 19 populations across the Arctic and are found in Canada, the United States, Russia, Greenland and Norway, according to conservation organization Polar Bears International.

The populations live under distinct and varying circumstances, but all depend upon ice sheets to access their main prey, two species of seal, said study coauthor Steven Amstrup, chief scientist emeritus at Polar Bears International.

When sea ice melts, polar bears are forced onto land where they are deprived of food and must survive on fat reserves that they have accumulated beforehand.

Polar bears mainly feed on their prey from the surface of ice sheets, which are increasingly
 declining due to climate warming caused by human activity. Kt Miller/Polar Bears International

Climate change caused by human activity is accelerating sea ice loss, giving polar bears less time to feed and build up their fat reserves, and more days where they are forced to go without food. This leads ultimately to a decline in their population.

Researchers from Polar Bears International, the University of Washington and the University of Wyoming have quantified the connection between the number of ice-free days a population of polar bears has to endure and the amount of planet-warming pollution released into the atmosphere, as well as corresponding polar bear survival rates in some populations, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Science.

Polar bears were listed as “threatened” due to human-caused climate warming under the US Endangered Species Act, or ESA, in 2008. But the US Department of Interior said at the time that, because threat to a particular species couldn’t be directly linked to a specific source of greenhouse gases, federal agencies don’t have to consider emissions when approving projects.

The researchers said the new study provides evidence

Ice in Svalbard, Norway, April 6, 2023. This part of the Arctic is warming up to seven times faster than the global average.  - Lisi Niesner/Reuters

(CNN) The Arctic could be free of sea ice roughly a decade earlier than projected, scientists warn – another clear sign the climate crisis is happening faster than expected as the world continues to pump out planet-heating pollution.

A new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications found Arctic sea ice could disappear completely during the month of September as early as the 2030s. Even if the world makes significant cuts to planet-heating pollution today, the Arctic could still see summers free of sea ice by the 2050s, scientists reported.

The researchers analyzed changes from 1979 to 2019, comparing different satellite data and climate models to assess how Arctic sea ice was changing.

Amphibians, such as this emerald glass frog in Panama, are seeing high levels of population declines, according to a new study.
  Bienvenido Velasco/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

(CNN) The global loss of wildlife is “significantly more alarming” than previously thought, according to a new study that found almost half the planet’s species are experiencing rapid population declines.

Humans have already wiped out huge numbers of species and pushed many more to the brink – with some scientists saying we are entering a “sixth mass extinction” event, this time driven by humans.

The main factor is the destruction of wild landscapes to make way for farms, towns, cities and roads, but climate change is also an important driver of species decline and is predicted to have an increasingly worse impact as the world warms.

The study’s authors analyzed more than 70,000 species across the globe – spanning mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and insects – to determine whether their populations have been growing, shrinking or remaining steady over time.

They found 48% of these species are declining in population size, with fewer than 3% seeing increases, according to the study published Monday in the journal Biological Reviews.

Co-author Daniel Pincheira-Donoso, from the School of Biological Sciences at Queen’s University Belfast, said their findings are a “drastic alert.”

“Other studies, based on considerably smaller numbers of species, have shown that the ongoing ‘extinction crisis’ is more severe than generally appreciated,” he told CNN. “Our findings provide a stark confirmation on a global scale.”

The study provides a “clearer picture” about the extent of the global erosion of biodiversity, he added.

For decades, the extinction crisis has been defined by “conservation categories” – labels that the International Union for Conservation of Nature assigns to each species they assess at a given moment in time, Pincheira-Donoso said.

Based on that method, the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species classifies about 28% of species as under threat of extinction.

“What our study shows is not whether species are currently classed as threatened or not, but instead, whether their population sizes are becoming rapidly and progressively smaller or not,” Pincheira-Donoso said. Downward trends in population over time are a precursor to extinctions.

According to this assessment, 33% of the species currently classed as “non-threatened” on the IUCN Red List are in fact declining towards extinction.

Mammals, birds and insects are all seeing species declines, but amphibians have been particularly badly affected overall, the report found, and are facing a multitude of threats, including disease and climate change.

It was better news for fish and reptiles, with more species appearing to have stable, rather than declining, populations.

Geographically, declines tend to be concentrated in the tropics, the report found. One reason for that is that “animals in the tropics are more sensitive to rapid changes in their environmental temperatures,” Pincheira-Donoso said.

“While we agree with the sentiments and concerns about the declines in species that this paper expresses (as it is fundamentally an analysis of IUCN Red List data), we think that the results over-inflate the situation,” said Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red List.

Using population data across a wide range of animal groups, including those where data is lacking, is a less robust measure than the IUCN’s Red List criteria “which look at the trends of species over much longer time frames,” he told CNN.

But Brendan Godley, a professor of conservation science at the University of Exeter who was not involved in the study, said the research offers novel insights into population trends.

“This is an extremely impactful study, spanning the globe and all vertebrate groups and insects,” Godley told CNN.

“By painstakingly combining population trajectories, rather than more limited Red List Assessments, it underlines how much pressure wildlife is under from human influence, and how this is global and across the animal groups,” he said.

There are positive stories of animals being brought back from the brink of extinction, he said, including great whales and sea turtles.

But, Godley added, “we should all be very alarmed about these results.”

“Without thriving populations, species, habitats and ecosystems, we cannot persist,” he said.

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