Earth Equity News

Narwhals More at Risk to Arctic Warming Than Polar Bears. By Seth Borenstein, AP, April 26, 2008. "The polar bear has become an icon of global warming vulnerability, but a new study [PDF 29 pp] found an Arctic mammal that may be even more at risk to climate change: the narwhal. The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Ecological Applications... The narwhal, which dives about 6,000 feet to feed on Greenland halibut, is the ultimate specialist, evolved specifically to live in small cracks in parts of the Arctic where it's 99 percent heavy ice... As the ice melts, not only is the narwhal habitat changed, predators such as killer whales will likely intrude more often... The paper is the talk of Arctic scientists, said Bob Corell, the head of an international team of scientists who wrote a massive assessment of risk in the Arctic in 2004 but wasn't part of this study. He called it 'surprising because the polar bear gets a lot of attention.'"