A Canadian college professor and zoologist said Monday the Obama administration has created "fake news" by exaggerating the threat to polar bears based on melting Arctic ice.
Susan J. Crockford, who runs the Polar Bear Science website, took issue with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's report that claims the future of the Arctic animals is bleak.
"The area of the Arctic covered by sea ice in October and November 2016 was the lowest on record for those months since record keeping began in 1979," the report reads. "The current global polar bear population is estimated to be 26,000. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at the current rates throughout the 21st century, polar bears will likely disappear from much of their present-day range."
Crockford called the claim "political posturing."
"I call this fake news because it’s not news," she wrote on her website.
The Washington Times reported on Crockford's comments.
"What the USFWS don't tell the citizens that pay their salaries (in their Conservation Management Plan or their discussions with the press), is that since 2007, summer sea ice coverage has declined to levels their sea ice colleagues said would not occur until 2050, yet 2/3 of the world's polar bears did not disappear as USGS biologists predicted (which is what got the bears listed as 'threatened' under the ESA)," she wrote.
"They also don't tell folks that the recent decline in population size recorded for the Southern Beaufort Sea was caused by thick spring sea ice in 2004-2006, not reduced summer sea ice."
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