How are Svalbard’s polar bears real­ly doing? A cri­ti­cal rep­ly from Mor­ten Jør­gen­sen

Svalbard’s polar bears are doing well – the popu­la­ti­on is sta­ble or even gro­wing slight­ly, many of the ani­mals are in good phy­si­cal con­di­ti­on. This is Jon Aars descrip­ti­on of the cur­rent situa­ti­on, see pre­vious artic­le.

But the­re are other opi­ni­ons. This is Mor­ten Jørgensen’s cri­ti­cal rep­ly to Jon Aars descrip­ti­on of the sta­te Svalbard’s polar bears curr­ent­ly are in. Mor­ten Jør­gen­sen is the aut­hor of the book Polar bears: bel­oved and betray­ed.

Polar bear on Prins Karls For­land.

Mor­ten Jørgensen’s cri­ti­cal rep­ly to Jon Aars

To the state­ments made by the lea­ding polar bear rese­ar­cher at the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te, Jon Aars, as he has been quo­ted in the artic­le Ekstre­mår for sjøi­sen: – Har smel­tet raskt gjen­nom som­me­ren

I feel com­pel­led to make this com­ment:

The­re is a ten­den­cy in polar bear manage­ment to push the con­se­quen­ces of the many pro­blems that the spe­ci­es face into the future. Some­ti­mes the near future. But never right now. Becau­se that would mean that the hun­ting would have to stop, and the mana­gers can­not bring them­sel­ves to even begin to face that decis­i­on. This lais­sez-fai­re atti­tu­de of pro­jec­tion of today’s issues into the future spills over into sci­ence.

Latest, Jon Aars claims that the polar bears in Sval­bard for now are doing ok – but will face toug­her times in the deca­des to come. He even goes so far as to say that the local popu­la­ti­on is sta­ble and may be gro­wing.

He has abso­lut­e­ly no sci­en­ti­fic basis for making such state­ments.

The latest attempt at coun­ting the polar bears of Sval­bard led to the con­clu­si­on that the­re is no sta­tis­ti­cal signi­fi­cant chan­ge in the popu­la­ti­on sin­ce the pre­vious “count”. In other words, Jon Aars’ opti­mism is based not in sci­en­ti­fic data, but in … ? I guess only he knows.

Also: The pre­su­med sta­bi­li­ty of the popu­la­ti­on, based on the data from tho­se last two counts, is NOT a good sign. It is actual­ly almost evi­dence that the local polar bear popu­la­ti­on on Sval­bard is in dire straits. How so? Well, the other main­stream mista­ke which Jon Aars makes is to for­get the his­to­ri­cal con­text. If ever­y­thing was just fine, the local polar bear popu­la­ti­on in Sval­bard should in recent deca­des have shown, and should still be show­ing, a signi­fi­cant increase – based on their cur­rent local pro­tec­tion sta­tus after long peri­ods of extre­me over-hun­ting. The very fact that the popu­la­ti­on is still lin­ge­ring at a meager 200-500 or so bears is a clear indi­ca­ti­on that the dis­in­te­gra­ti­on of their main habi­tat is caus­ing the local popu­la­ti­on to be under mas­si­ve stress.

The Sval­bard polar bear popu­la­ti­on is clinging on. And must be pre­su­med to be facing a steep decli­ne soon. To bring forth unfoun­ded opti­mism is not good sci­ence, but only ser­ves to fal­se­ly appease tho­se who think that urgent action is not nee­ded for the polar bear to recei­ve full pro­tec­tion.

Mor­ten Jør­gen­sen

Octo­ber 30, 2024.

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