Scientists reveal that bears have stopped hibernating
The UK’s Independent is reporting Scientists reveal that bears have stopped hibernating.
Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.
In a December in which bumblebees, butterflies and even swallows have been on the wing in Britain, European brown bears have been lumbering through the forests of Spain’s Cantabrian mountains, when normally they would already be in their long, annual sleep.
In a related article also in the Independent, called A shock to the ancient rhythms of the natural world, Michael McCarthy asks us to
Consider what a significant disruption of a life pattern this is. Hibernation has evolved for the same reason most animal behaviour has evolved: as a strategy to maximise survival.
If some European brown bears in the Cantabrian mountains are now stopping hibernation, we can draw two conclusions. First, something quite enormous is happening in the world around them, and if you want to hazard a guess that that something is global warming, you would have as good a theory as any other.
Second, they are abandoning a survival strategy - which has been successful - for the unknown. What if they give up hibernation because of rising winter temperatures, but then when they are active in winter, are unable to find enough food?
We are already witnessing what a problem such disruption of natural cycles can cause for other creatures. In Britain, insects are hatching earlier in the spring, but migratory birds that depend on the “flush” of caterpillars to feed their young are coming back at the same time as they have always done, and thus may be starting to miss out on the feast: this may be one of the reasons why many of our woodland birds are now in sharp decline.
Climate chaos is affecting the entirety of life on Earth. For our leaders to still be claiming that it’s easier and cheaper, and thus somehow a better option, to do nothing about it is a moral, as well as a market failure. Sure life will go on, but the bears, and other creatures whose ages-old ways of life are being turned upside down, may not survive. And neither may we. — DS
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