Climate Change vs Mother Nature: 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.

Bears are supposed to slumber throughout the winter, slowing their body rhythms to a minimum and drawing on stored resources, because frozen weather makes food too scarce to find. The barely breathing creatures can lose up to 40 per cent of their body weight before warmer springtime weather rouses them back to life.

But many of the 130 bears in Spain's northern cordillera - which have a slightly different genetic identity from bear populations elsewhere in the world - have remained active throughout recent winters, naturalists from Spain's Brown Bear Foundation (La Fundación Oso Pardo - FOP) said yesterday.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2091875.ece

:evilgrin:

this was posted in the lounge about
"wood"...hey it`s the lounge

http://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm
Hardiness Zone Changes at arborday.org

where i`m at i`ll be in another zone with in the next ten years

Boy, this global climate change is wreaking havoc with bears all over the world. We may lose the polar bears and now this.

Unfortunately I'm cynical enough to believe that until humans are directly and unequivocally affected by the warming climate we will not act with enough haste.

Most of us are so inured to the tragedy that unfolds on the television every night that when it happens for real to us we won't know how to act.

It won't be pretty. But I'm damned glad that I'm not alone and there's folks like you and other DUers that are aware.

emotionally prepared. And I KNOW I'm not financially or logistically prepared. I have a 5-10 year plan for vastly improved self-sufficiency and a nearly-carbon-neutral lifestyle. 5-10 years.