Environment

New study reveals changes in the Arctic

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A new study that examines the health of species native to the Arctic Circle was released today, and the news is mixed. Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with Mike Gill, co-author of the report.

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JEB SHARP:  I’m Jeb Sharp and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.  We have two headlines today from an international meeting on endangered species.  First, the U.N. gathering voted not to ban the trade in Atlantic blue fin tuna.  This, despite concerns that blue fin tuna are seriously over-fished.  The meeting also rejected a proposed ban on the trade in polar bear parts.  That vote came after Canada and Norway argued that the ban would negatively impact local native economies.  Polar bears are just one of the many species living in the Arctic and today we’re also finding out the results of the largest study ever to focus on Arctic species.  The authors call it an index and it pulls together disparate research on Arctic vertebrates going back more than forty years.  Mike Gill is a co-author of the study.  He says the survey revealed that the overall wildlife population in the Arctic has been increasing.

MIKE GILL:  So the overall index represents about 35% of all known Arctic fish, bird and mammal species has gone up by about 16%.  But, there’s some mixed patterns in there.  What we’ve seen is that in the high arctic populations on average have declined about one quarter, whereas in the low and sub-arctic areas we’re seeing a more stable picture.

SHARP: Give us a sense of some key species just so people can imagine what we’re talking about.

GILL: What might surprise some listeners is that the arctic actually has very abundant wildlife resources.  So we have several million caribou and reindeer in various herds around the arctic and millions and millions of various birds such as geese, so there’s large populations.  Many of these populations actually naturally cycle.  So they go through wide swings of growth and decline.  So the challenge with interpreting an index like this is to try and explore those patterns and determine where there may be areas of concern or areas of optimism.

SHARP: And when you look at the index as it is now, I understand there’s still a lot to figure out, but what’s really striking about what you see in the data?

GILL: Sure.  Well one of the interesting findings is the fact that we’re seeing declines in some of the high arctic species, where we’ve also seen over that same period, the most rapid increases of temperature, for instance.  Whereas in what we call the subarctic, or the lower latitudes, we’re seeing more stable populations or even some increases.  And while we can’t say for sure what’s driving these things, that broad scale pattern is very much in line with what is predicted with climate change whereas you’re going to see the various species in the high arctic that are more specialized to a more extreme environment potentially faring worse with the rapid changes in system.  Whereas in the low arctic you have species that may be able to take advantage, at least in the short term, of some of this.  But I wouldn’t want to point a finger at climate change for everything in here.  So, for instance, some of the increases that we’ve seen with our marine mammal species, such as whales and sea otters, and many of those increases since 1970 are the result of the fact that we no longer over-harvest those species.  So that’s some of the good news.  And of course we have species that are declining.

SHARP: Yeah, let’s talk about one that people think about a lot, the polar bears.  Does this report shed light on trends regarding their numbers?

GILL: Well unfortunately not a lot and that’s partly due to the nature of polar bear populations.  Polar bear populations are widespread across the arctic and generally they’re very difficult to get good population trend estimates.  So our report is unable, really, to say how polar bears are doing.

SHARP: And this study looks at vertebrates, birds, fish, mammals.  What about invertebrates, insects, shellfish and the like?

GILL: Well this is what we’d like to do next actually. Invertebrate population trends are much more difficult to actually measure.  But we’d like to go there at some point, so the idea here is that we’d like to keep updating the index over time and track essentially the trajectory of all these different species.

SHARP: Well thank you very much.  Mike Gill is the chair of Canada’s Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program.  We spoke with him from a conference on the Arctic.  Thanks again.

GILL: Thank you.

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