Polar bear tracked on epic 9-day swim

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Polar bear tracked on epic 9-day swim WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Scientists say a female polar bear embarked on a swimming search for sea ice north of Alaska that lasted nine days and covered 426 miles. Scientists studying the bears around the Beaufort Sea say this endurance swim could be a result of climate change, the BBC reported Tuesday. Polar bears are known to embark on journeys between land and sea ice floes to hunt seals, but researchers say diminishing sea ice is forcing polar bears to swim greater distances, risking their own health and that of future generations. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey published the details of their study in the journal Polar Biology. "This bear swam continuously for 232 hours and 687 kilometers (426 miles) and through waters that were 2-6 degrees C (35 to 42 degrees F)," research zoologist George M. Durner said. "We are in awe that an animal that spends most of its time on the surface of sea ice could swim constantly for so long in water so cold. It is truly an amazing feat." Researchers say the epic journey, tracked with a GPS collar placed on the bear, came at a high cost for the animal. "This individual lost 22 percent of her body fat in two months and her yearling cub," Durner said. "This dependency on sea ice potentially makes polar bears one of the most at-risk large mammals to climate change." Copyright 2011 by United Press International
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'Rogue' storm blamed in Pakistan flooding SEATTLE (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say a "rogue" weather system caused the disastrous Pakistan floods of last summer that killed more than 2,000 people and left millions homeless. Researchers at the University of Washington say a system that wandered hundreds of miles farther west than is normal for such systems was responsible, a university release reported Tuesday. The flooding that began in July and at one point covered an estimated 20 percent of Pakistan's total land area in water was caused by a storm system that had formed over the Bay of Bengal in late July and moved unusually far to the west over the Himalayas, dumping rainfall that caused the Indus River in Pakistan to overflow. UW researchers examined rainfall data from satellites. "We looked through 10 years of data from the satellite and we just never saw anything like this," UW atmospheric sciences Professor Robert Houze said. "I think this was a rare event, but it is one you want to be thinking about. Understanding what happened could lead to better predictions of such disasters in the future." Copyright 2011 by United Press International
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Tiger conservation goal recommended WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Asia could support 10,000 wild tigers, more than three times existing numbers, if landscapes are managed to allow breeding sites to be connected, experts say. The study, co-authored by World Wildlife Fund scientists, made the recommendation as part of an assessment of the political commitment made by all 13 tiger range countries at a November tiger summit aimed at doubling the tiger population across Asia by 2022, a WWF release said Tuesday. "In the midst of a crisis, it's tempting to circle the wagons and only protect a limited number of core protected areas, but we can and should do better," WWF scientist Eric Dinerstein said. "We absolutely need to stop the bleeding, the poaching of tigers and their prey in core breeding areas, but we need to go much further and secure larger tiger landscapes before it is too late." Wild tiger numbers have dropped from about 100,000 in the early 1900s to as few as 3,200 today due to poaching, habitat destruction and human/tiger conflict, researchers say. Most of the remaining populations are scattered in small, isolated pockets across their range in 13 Asian countries. "Tiger conservation is the face of biodiversity conservation and competent sustainable land-use management at the landscape level," study co-author John Seidensticker of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute said. "By saving the tiger we save all the plants and animals that live under the tiger's umbrella." Copyright 2011 by United Press International
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New images of martian moon released PARIS (UPI) -- The European Space Agency has released close-up portraits of Mars's moon Phobos, taken as the ESA Mars Express spacecraft flew within 60 miles of it. Showing a multitude of mysterious grooves etched into Phobos' surface, the images were captured Jan. 9, an ESA release accompanying the images reported Monday. "This was an exceptional flyby where for the first time we could cover a large part of the far side of Phobos' Southern Hemisphere," Mars Express scientist Gerhard Neukum of the Free University of Berlin said. Resolving features as small as 17 yards across, they show in detail the currently planned landing sites for the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission scheduled for launch later this year, the ESA said. The Russian craft would be the first probe to land on Phobos, Alexander Basilevsky of the Phobos-Grunt team at the Vernadsky Institute in Moscow said. Scientists can construct high-resolution topographic maps of the landing sites from the images to help help determine where Phobos-Grunt will ultimately touch down, the ESA said. Copyright 2011 by United Press International
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