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Iceland bucks 'warming' climate trend 
Thick pack ice, not seen for decades, stretches into western fjords

 Iceland fears bears that go with the floe

The oceans may be warming and air temperatures rising, but in recent days Iceland has bucked the global climate trend.

Thick pack ice, the like of which has not been seen for decades, stretched into the western fjords as temperatures plummeted and a bitter wind blew in from -Greenland.

The ice has proved a headache for fishermen, who have been unable to put to sea, but it is what comes with pack ice that has caused most concern: polar bears.

 Iceland fears bears that go with the floe

By Gethin Chamberlain, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:46am GMT 04/02/2007

The oceans may be warming and air temperatures rising, but in recent days Iceland has bucked the global climate trend.

Thick pack ice, the like of which has not been seen for decades, stretched into the western fjords as temperatures plummeted and a bitter wind blew in from -Greenland.

The ice has proved a headache for fishermen, who have been unable to put to sea, but it is what comes with pack ice that has caused most concern: polar bears.

(http://photos.freenewmexican.com/2007/01/21/46536_375x375.jpg)

By ALICIA P.Q. WITTMEYER | Associated Press
January 21, 2007


GLENNS FERRY, Idaho (AP) - Jim Martell has been hunting since age 8 and has dozens of trophies, including two 10 feet-tall brown bears from Russia, a wallaby from New Zealand and two ibex from Kyrgyzstan.

But his most exotic yet is the world's only recorded incidence of a wild polar bear-grizzly crossbreed.

Martell, 66, shot the hybrid that scientists have dubbed a "pizzly" this spring, sending shockwaves through the scientific community. The now-stuffed bear took its place in his trophy room this month, a few feet away from a Canadian wolf.

He plans to have friends and people in town over to celebrate the big kill with a bear party in the next few weeks.

"It is just a beautiful animal," said Martell, who owns a telephone company out of Glenns Ferry, and operates a Salmon, Idaho-based elk ranch. "When we first got up to it, my guide said to me, 'you have a million dollar bear."

 
The pizzly _ Martell prefers "polar grizz" _ can't actually be legally sold. But Martell has already received requests from museums that want to display the animal, and had calls from scientists asking him to describe the characteristics of the unusual creature.

From a distance, the animal looks like a slightly dirty polar bear. But up close, dark rings around its eyes, a hump on its back, long brown claws and an indented face are giveaways to its unique heritage.

DNA tests in April showed the bear's mother was a polar bear and its father was a grizzly. The bear has the small head and neck of a polar bear _ they come in handy when going after seals through holes in the ice _ but at about 7.5 feet long, it's closer in size to a grizzly than a polar, which can grow up to 11 feet.

The bear caused a stir in biological circles after Martell shot it on a 14-day, $45,450 hunt on Banks Island in northern Canada earlier this year. Polar bears and grizzly bears have been successfully mated in the past, but only in zoos; both bears' breeding habits have them mating several times before the female can become fertile, which means the two bears would have had to get along for about a week in the wild together, said Ian Stirling, a biologist who specializes in polar bears with the Canadian Wildlife Service in Edmonton, Alberta.

"It's obviously not a case of _ to use a very crude term _ a one-night-stand," Stirling said. "They've had to interact socially and very intensely socially for a very extended period of time. That's what makes this so surprising: they obviously look different, you'd think they'd recognize that they were dealing with a different kind of animal."

Martell nearly missed the bear that rocked the scientific world this spring: his guide spotted the polar bear-grizzly cross walking on a ridge above the ocean, about 300 yards away. Martell had just one shot.

It's staying in his trophy room until it goes to his oldest grandson.

Not a bit surprising at all. They both knew that they were both a bear.



Gen 1:25  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.