Wildlife and global warming Navigating the Arctic Meltdown

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; Global warming; inuit; ivory gull; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.230.5676; http://www.defenders.org/resources/publications/programs_and_policy/science_and_economics/global_warming/navigating_the_arctic_meltdown_ivory_gull.pdf

ivory gulls Arctic lore is rife with the ghosts of doomed voyages and other legends, but the story of a pale seabird disappearing from its icy haunts is no tall tale. The ivory gull is, in fact, literally losing ground as rising temperatures melt its polar sea-ice habitat. Aerial surveys of ivory gull breeding colonies, bird counts conducted at sea and the observations of local native people all point to a precipitous fall in Canadian populations. A recent aerial survey of nesting ivory gulls documented an 80 percent decline in the number of breeding birds since the 1980s. Surveyors found several of the largest colonies completely extirpated and significantly fewer nesting birds in the remaining colonies. At sea, where the gulls forage and feed in the polar icepack, researchers aboard cruising icebreakers in 2002 saw less than a third of the number of ivory gulls seen in 1993, and no ivory gulls scavenging around polar bear kills on the sea ice. Canadian Inuit communities with firsthand knowledge of this seabird, which shares their isolated homeland, also note a downturn. These observations alarm conservationists. “[Surveys] showed a really significant decline in the number of birds nesting in Nunavat, which is the only place they nest in Canada, ” says Dick Canning, a member of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. Adds Mark Mallory, a seabird biologist with the Canadian