Seal Cubs in Climate Change Danger | Baby Seals Losing Numbers With Global Warming

For Seal Cubs, Life Gets Harder: Climate Change Danger

March 13, 2008 2:47 pm Nadia Environment, In the News, Issues

Global Warming a Threat to Baby Seals
Baby Arctic Seal Cubs
Seal cubs are one of the more adorable endangered species, but not for long if the earth continues heating up.

The World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature in Germany announced Monday that hundreds of newborn seals risk dying of hunger and cold due to global warming. “In some part, not a single one of the seal cubs born in the past few weeks will survive,” stated the WWF.

Pointing Out the Obvious About Global Warming

The heating of the earth from greenhouses gases is causing the Arctic Circle to melt away. The faster the ice melts, the quicker the seal cubs end up in the ice water before developing a layer of insulating fat. The fat layer develops in the first few weeks of their life, when they live in burrows dug in the ice sheet. If the ice melts, they end up in the icy ocean before their fatty layer grows and allows them to survive.

More Than Cute Seal Cubs

The WWF concluded there was less ice now in the Arctic than there has been in the past 300 years. Additionally, there are currently 7,000 to 10,000 ringed seals in the Arctic. This figure is compared to the 180,000 seals that existed, less than a century ago.

Baby seals in the southwest coast of Finland and the Gulf of Riga were the most at risk, while the ice surrounding the Gulf of Bothnia between Sweden and Finland is thinning quickly. Around 1,500 seal cubs born in the last two months have been in danger.

The melting of the Arctic Circle is also worrisome for fuzzy polar bears, who are at risk of extinction due to their natural habitat disappearing.

For more about global warming and seal cubs, click here.

Copyright 2008 Matty Byloos