25 Walruses Killed on Alaskan Beach, Beheaded and Missing Tusks

It's a bad time to be a walrus. Authorities have launched a federal investigation into the deaths of 25 walruses on a beach off the Chukchi Sea in northwest Alaska last week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) believe that the walruses did not die of natural causes.
"The carcasses, nearly half of which were cubs, seem to have been shot—some were even beheaded," says Bustle. Investigators suspect that they were poached for their ivory because some of their remains lacked tusks.
Poachers may have killed these 25 walruses for their heads and tusks: http://t.co/8rcnM2DLe4 http://t.co/kbVAT3sQw3— VICE News (@VICE News)1443131766.0
"The missing heads and tusks don’t necessarily indicate illegal activity," FWS spokesperson Andrea Medeiros told CBS Seattle. "The animals could have died in the ocean and washed ashore," she said. "Federal regulations allow anyone to collect bones, teeth and ivory of dead marine mammals found on beaches or land within a quarter-mile of the ocean, though they must follow certain rules," says CBS Seattle. "Walrus skulls with tusk attached are collectors’ items. The ivory often is carved and made into jewelry. However, walrus killed only for the collection of ivory is considered wasteful, and 'head-hunting' is illegal."
Horrible: 25 walruses, including babies, reportedly killed in Alaska refuge http://t.co/q03hAKAoO2 http://t.co/64pGgvfMcq— Wilderness Society (@Wilderness Society)1442870129.0
As if that wasn't bad enough, about 100 miles away at Point Lay, where some 35,000 walruses were hauled out yet again this year due to record low sea ice, an estimated 37 walruses were also found dead last week. In that case, FWS said that "they do not appear to have died as a result of foul play," according to Alaska Dispatch News.
"We haven’t had a chance to go out there and confirm whether they’re from this year or last year or identify the cause of death,” said James MacCracken, a supervisory biologist and walrus specialist at FWS.
35,000 walruses ‘hauled-out’ at Point Lay, Alaska, coinciding with declining sea ice #CWNYC http://t.co/WithcNu5sQ http://t.co/lx8UJNWZBZ— Geographical (@Geographical)1442849583.0
As of last week, the Point Lay area haulout was estimated to include 10,000 walruses, said Medeiros. Earlier this month, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that this summer, the Arctic sea ice hit the fourth-lowest level on record. Since 2007, diminishing sea ice in summer and fall has forced more and more female walruses and their pups ashore. Typically, they use the ice floes for resting and nursing in between dives for food. The overcrowding on beaches results in dangerous conditions, especially for the pups. They can be crushed to death when a herd stampedes due to disturbances from polar bears, people, aircraft or boat traffic.
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A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>By John R. Platt
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