Background Articles

Warmer temperatures and declining sea ice pulls foreign animals and plants to the Arctic, with drastic consequences for these sensitive ecosystems.

A scientific paper published recently hints at how increasing winter rainfall will affect the Arctic muskox. An N.W.T. biologist says winter rain isn't good for the mammal, but it's actually warmer summers that could prove detrimental.

A new study has uncovered previously unknown effects of rain-on-snow events, winter precipitation and ice tidal surges on the muskoxen.

Climate change may be enabling beavers to move deeper into the Arctic. And as they move, they magnify climate change’s effects.

Recent decline of sea ice habitat has coincided with increased use of land by polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from the southern Beaufort Sea (SB), which may alter the risks of exposure to pathogens and contaminants. We assayed blood samples from SB polar bears to assess prior exposure to the pathogens Brucella spp., Toxoplasma gondii, Coxiella burnetii, Francisella tularensis, and Neospora caninum, estimate concentrations of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), and evaluate risk factors associated with exposure to pathogens and POPs. We found that seroprevalence of Brucella spp. and T. gondii antibodies likely increased through time, and provide the first evidence of exposure of polar bears to C. burnetii, N. caninum, and F. tularensis. Additionally, the odds of exposure to T. gondii were greater for bears that used land than for bears that remained on the sea ice during summer and fall, while mean concentrations of the POP chlordane (ΣCHL) were lower for land-based bears. Changes in polar bear behavior brought about by climate-induced modifications to the Arctic marine ecosystem may increase exposure risk to certain pathogens and alter contaminant exposure pathways.

Alberta consistently sees an average of 1400 wildfires each year however, the increased economic costs due to firefighting, equipment, damaged properties, evacuations, insurance, remote housing and food can be a challenge.

Brown bears on Alaska’s Kodiak Island are switching to a vegetarian diet of elderberries in preference to salmon because the warmer temperatures are ripening the fruit earlier in the year. Normally the bears would eat up to 75 per cent of the salmon that swim up the rivers to spawn up until about late August. And, when this plentiful supply of protein started to dry up, the bears would switch to the elderberries that usually come into fruit in late August or early September.

Habitat of the endangered Vancouver Island marmot is disappearing as the warming climate allows trees to grow higher up mountainsides, turning alpine meadows into forest. Adam Taylor, executive . . .

Jim Wilder, the polar bear project leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, recently published a paper on how climate change is impacting polar bear behavior. The study is the first of its kind, combining research from the United States, Norway, Canada, Greenland and Russia to look at what motivates polar bears to attack humans.

In the Arctic, brown bears (Ursus arctos) are expanding their range northward, in some cases competing with and even mating with polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Beavers (Castor canadensis) have been found as far north as the coast of the Beaufort Sea. The list includes mammals, amphibians, fish and insects.

The Canada lynx, once eliminated from most of New England by forest clearing and unsustainable hunting and trapping, is making a comeback.

Three separate outbreaks of anthrax this summer in the Yamalo-Nenets region killed one boy, almost 2,400 reindeer, and several dogs. All the new 'Christmas deer' are from Yamal, and unaffected by the infection.

As a debate is underway on culling as many as 250,000 reindeer due to overgrazing, Research Professor Bruce C Forbes warns against some proposed solutions.

Warming Arctic temperatures can create an environment friendly to bacterial infections like anthrax, an infection spread by contact with bacterial spores, which plant-eating animals may eat or breathe in while grazing.

Somebody is poisoning the moose of Anchorage. It's probably you. And many of your relatives, friends, and neighbors. Because the entire city is a garden laced with poisonous plants.

Human encounters with cougars are on the rise in Alberta, according to wildlife conservation group WildSmart.

Kays, along with fellow curator Robert Feranec, developed a new kind of carbon isotope test on hair and bone that proved the Sacandaga Lake wolf lived on a diet in the wild, and had never been a pet or zoo specimen fed by humans. Seeing the animal was not a coyote, the hunter gave the wolf carcass to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which called in federal wildlife officials, who confiscated it. The DEC issued a statement saying the study shows federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials need to reverse efforts to remove endangered species protections for wolves in the Northeast. Said Christopher Amato, assistant commissioner for natural resources, "We continue to believe that natural recovery of wolves in the Northeast is possible and urge the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its recent proposals and to update its wolf recovery plan to reflect this new scientific information and support the natural recolonization by wolves." In July 2004, federal officials proposed removing the wolf from the endangered species in the east, due to growing wolf populations from recovery efforts in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Shorter, milder winters caused by global warming to blame for steady decrease in size of St Kilda sheep, experts say