Polar Bear - Candle Burning at Both Ends.

We know that you do not like viewing these pictures, They must be made public though. After all they are already public but in the wrong sense.

The Polar Bear’s future is literally melting away along with the Arctic sea ice beneath its feet. Meanwhile, some countries continue to allow the bears to be hunted for sport and their body parts to be sold legally in the international commercial market. Miranda pictured here killed this Polar Bear with a bow few years back. Polar Bears are threatened by hunters, illegal poachers and climate change oddly caused by us. Is it OK to then state that this amazing beast must be the worlds most unluckiest animal “still” alive? Tell Miranda what you think above by clicking the photo url.

Antarctica’s polar ice cap is melting at a staggering rate never seen before. Many species of animals are being harmed by this rapid melt that humans have contributed too. One animal that’s in dire need of emergency protection is the Polar Bear.

Unfortunately with climate change on the rise and Antarctica melting away as we speak - men such as Miranda from Ohio now currently residing in Englewood, Florida feels it even more necessary to place the species of Polar Bear in even more danger.

So what’s the the current news on Antarctica?

German researchers have established the height of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps with greater precision than ever before. And the new maps they have produced show that the ice is melting at an unprecedented rate.

The maps, produced with a satellite-mounted instrument, have elevation accuracies to within a few metres. Since Greenland’s ice cap is more than 2,000 metres thick on average, and the Antarctic bedrock supports 61 percent of the planet’s fresh water, this means that scientists can make more accurate assessments of annual melting.

Dr Veit Helm and other glaciologists at the Alfred Wegener Institute’s Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, report in the journal The Cryosphere that, between them, the two ice sheets are now losing ice at the unprecedented rate of 500 cubic kilometers a year.

Big picture

The measurements used to make the maps were taken by an instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s orbiting satellite CryoSat-2. The satellite gets closer to the poles—to 88° latitude—than any previous mission and traverses almost 16 million sq km of ice, adding an area of ice the size of Spain to the big picture of change and loss in the frozen world.

CryoSat-2’s radar altimeter transmitted 7.5 million measurements of Greenland and 61 million of Antarctica during 2012, enabling glaciologists to work with a set of consistent measurements from a single instrument.

Over a three-year period, the researchers collected 200 million measurements in Antarctica and more than 14 million in Greenland. They were able to study how the ice sheets changed by comparing the data with measurements made by NASA’s ICESat mission.

More complex

Greenland’s volume of ice is being reduced at the rate of 375 cubic km a year. In Antarctica, the picture is more complex as the West Antarctic ice sheet is losing ice rapidly, but is growing in volume in East Antarctica.

Overall, the southern continent—98 percent of which is covered with ice and snow—is losing 125 cubic km a year. These are the highest rates observed since researchers started making satellite observations 20 years ago.

“Since 2009, the volume loss in Greenland has increased by a factor of about two, and the West Antarctic ice sheet by a factor of three,” said Angelika Humbert, one of the report’s authors.

And the Polar Bear?

Robert F. Kennedy quoted;

“The Polar Bear has been sending us a desperate S.O.S. There have been documented reports of Polar Bears drowning and starving — and of snowy dens collapsing on newborn cubs and their mothers from unseasonable rains. The world no longer has any Polar Bears to spare — certainly not to end up as a rug in front of a trophy hunter’s fireplace. We have to put a stop to the worldwide commercial trade in polar bear parts”

-Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., NRDC Senior Attorney

And what a statement to make. True to its point saddening to read we are this stunning animal is the most unluckiest animal facing extinction on the planet or if not hunted to extinction half the population will face a very daunting life in zoological gardens or man made reserves of which the WWF is creating as we speak to help sustain the worlds only Antarctic bear.

Polar bears belong in the wild, living and free — not as mounted decorations in the trophy rooms of wealthy big game hunters.

Upgrading the polar bear’s protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) represents our best hope for saving them from trophy hunting and the ongoing commercial trade in polar bear pelts, fur, claws and skulls.

NRDC is in the final stretch of our intensive two-year effort leading up to the next meeting of CITES, which could act to ban this trade in goods made from polar bears and tighten controls on polar bear trophy hunts.

The video below is extremely traumatizing however IT MUST be shown. We have created this problem now we must help to slow it down. Question> Why is CITES signatories allowing the inhumane killings of Polar Bears for rugs and parts when climate change is also killing the species off? Before you know it, in a blink of an eye lid our Arctic Bears will be gone.

Dr Jon Williamson - PhD, Ba, EnVstU

Environmental Scientist - Chief Registrar 

The next Cites conference of parties is this 2015. We MUST all act today and demand that Polar Bear hunting is banned for good and more environmental research is carried out to now sustain our Antarctic fauna and flora.

ACT TODAY - NOT TOMORROW