The polar bear just got listed as a threatened species, but veteran polar explorer Will Steger and the team he’s leading in the Canadian Arctic found themselves threatened _ by the bears.
Steger said the large concentration of polar bears they encountered last month added to the dangers his team faces as they make their way north to Ellesmere Island, the northernmost part of Canada.
"I’ve never seen so many bears _and curious bears _ in one area like this," he said Thursday via satellite phone from the northern tip of Axel Heiberg Island, less than 500 miles from the North Pole. "They would walk, literally, right into camp."
Fortunately, the bears weren’t aggressive because they were well fed on seals, he said. "But they were curious and not afraid at all. And they kept us up a number of nights," he said.
Steger said he doubts that the Interior Department’s decision Wednesday to put polar bears under the Endangered Species Act will result in any concrete new protections for the animals.
"It’s great that the bear is on the list here," he said. "It’s probably not going to protect the bear much, knowing this administration. There’s not a lot of teeth in it."
In announcing the decision Wednesday, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said the listing "will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting." Environmental groups said that’s because the change in status is being rendered toothless by measures the Bush administration is taking to prevent the polar bears’ threatened status from being used to force reductions in greenhouse gases.
Still, Steger said, he’s glad for anything that gets people talking about global warming.
"It affects us at home," he said. "Not just the poor polar bear that’s losing its habitat. We’re next in line."
With the economy suffering under gasoline prices approaching $4 a gallon and America’s dependence on imported oil, he said, the U.S. needs to focus even harder on developing ecologically sound alternative sources of energy.
"It’s all linked together. You can’t separate the bears from the economy, from national security," he said.
Steger, who splits his time between Minnesota’s northwoods and the Twin Cities when he’s not off on an adventure, gained fame by leading several pioneering dogsled treks across the Arctic and Antarctica.
Getting people _ especially young people _ to take global warming seriously is the goal of the 63-year-old’s current dogsled expedition, which features six people in their 20s from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Norway. They update the expedition’s Web site with fresh dispatches, photos and video almost daily.
"Six people like this are a conduit to that generation," he said.
The polar bear population where they’re traveling remains very stable, Steger said, but he pointed out that populations have been falling in other areas of the Arctic _ southern Hudson Bay, northern Alaska and Spitsbergen _ where the disappearance of sea ice has made it difficult for the bears to find food.
Besides polar bears, the other major danger the expedition has faced has been the unusually rough pack ice, with ridges heaving as high as 40 feet, he said. It would be easy to get caught under one of their 800-pound sleds, which flip easily, and break a leg or worse, he said.
Thursday marked Day 47 of the expedition itself, but counting training time they’ve been in the Arctic almost three months. The unexpectedly rough ice means they won’t make it to the northernmost point of Ellesmere Island as they had hoped, he said. They’re approaching the end of the 1,400-mile trek and expect to be in New York on June 1.
While temperatures were in the 20-below range for much of the journey, Steger said the weather has turned mild in the last 10 days. He said it was about 20 degrees as he spoke Thursday, without much wind. But he said the 24-hour sunshine has become a danger due to the thin ozone layer in the region this time of year, so they’re traveling when the sun is at their backs.
"The sun is extremely intense on a clear day. It just really fries your face," he said.
But Steger’s mind was never far Thursday from global warming and the closely linked issues of energy and the economy.
"There’s hope, there’s solutions here," he said. "We have the solutions, we have the technology, it’s a matter of waking up."
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On the Net:
Expedition site: http://www.globalwarming101.com
Will Steger’s site: http://www.willsteger.com
