Tusk! Walrus May Join Polar Bear on Endangered List

by Emily Gertz

categories: Activism, Arctic & Antarctic, Science, Wilderness, Wildlife & Biodiversity

Published September 09, 2009 @ 03:18PM PT

Even as the summer Artic sea ice is receding towards another near-record low, the Obama administration has announced that it will consider the Pacific walrus for endangered species protections.

Yesterday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it was opening a 60-day review period to determine whether the walrus should be listed under the Endangered Species Act.

It took the agency a mere year and a half to make it to this moment. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) first petitioned the FWS to protect the Pacific walrus in early 2008. After the agency failed to act, the group then sued the Bush administration in December; in May, a federal judge approved a settlement between FWS and CBD that the agency would make its initial finding on the petition by September 10.

Walrus rely on Arctic sea ice habitat for breeding, and to provide way-stations for resting and relaxing. Nursing mothers will typically leave their calves on the ice so that they can dive for mollusks and other food.

But global warming's impacts on the Arctic are in essence killing thousands of walrus: in 2007, as summer Arctic ice hit its lowest extent ever, over 3,000 young walrus were trampled to death in late summer and fall as they crowded together on the Russian side of the Bering Strait.

In June, Fish and Wildlife released long-delayed data confirming that the Arctic Pacific walrus population, as well as the number of polar bears, were decreasing due to the loss of their sea-ice habitat to climate change, the impacts of oil development in the north Chukchi Sea, and over-hunting. "...the Service estimated a minimum population of 15,164 animals and an annual human-caused mortality of between 4,963 and 5,460 animals. The calculated sustainable rate of harvest is 607 animals per year," reported ScienceDaily.

In 2006, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reported on observations of walrus calves swimming alone far from shore, apparently abandoned by mothers who couldn't find near-shore sea ice perches to rest on. “We would sail up to a particular location and stay there for 24 hours at a time, and one or two of these pups would swim up to us, and the poor little guys would just bark at us for hours on end,” said WHOI biologist Carin Ashjian. “It was really awful. I wouldn’t go outside.”

Walrus don't tend to breed well in captivity, making preservation of wild habitat even more critical. At the beginning of September, a two-year-old male Pacific walrus named Akituusaq died of pneumonia at the New York Aquarium. He had been the first Pacific walrus born in the aquarium's 113-year history.

The AP reports today that around 3,500 Pacific walrus are crowding the shoreline at northwestern coastal Alaska's Icy Cape, in the Chukchi Sea, "a sign that their Arctic sea ice environment is changing because of climate change."

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Image: "Pacific Walrus utilize beaches around Cape Peirce as haulout areas on which to rest between feeding forays. These beaches are surrounded by sheer cliffs affording the walrus protection from predators." Source: US Fish and Wildlife Service