Thor the walrus has become quite famous in the UK. Believed to be between 3-5 years old he’s been spotted at various locations on the UK coast and even the coast of the European continent. He appears to have been travelling around Europe rather than in his normal habitat thousands of miles north on the Arctic ice.
It is not unique to see a walrus in the UK with apparently 27 sightings over the past 130 years. But it’s rare judging by those statistics.
The walrus normally lives on ice using it to serve their needs in resting breeding and travelling. They feed off bivalves and clams.
My research indicates that the reason why Thor is so far out of his normal habitat is because it is thawing due to climate change. He is losing his habitat which has forced walruses to travel further to find food and a place to rest. Loss of habitat, ring a bell?! What about deforestation killing off millions of animals? I am afraid Thor is another example of how human activity is destroying nature.
Walruses now frequently rest on land rather than ice and are forced to travel large distances up to a hundred miles to look for food. This reminds me of the polar bear which suffers from exactly the same problem. There have been stories of polar bears drowning as they swim such huge distances and become exhausted in their search for food.
And the same is likely to happen to walruses as they become exhausted and starved. It is likely that there will be a reduction in their population size due to global warming. Another negative human influence on their environment is shipping traffic and acidification. They are also struck by ships.
So, there it is, as the world warms up the walruses lose their habitat. Matt Ridley, writing in The Times newspaper said, however, that the Atlantic subspecies of walrus has been recovering slowly since the early 1950s. However, this is because Norway made it illegal to hunt them.
Ridley believes that walruses are thriving in a warming climate. A letter to The Times by Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change disagrees.
This letter is as follows:
“Matt Ridley is right that the Atlantic subspecies of walrus has been recovering slowly since 1952 when Norway made it illegal to hunt them but his claim that they are thriving in a warming climate is incorrect. In 2016, the walrus was classified as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species which noted that ‘climatic warming will surely require them to live in a much different environment as sea ice recedes and disappears from many of the areas they have used in past centuries’. Ridley wrongly stated that Arctic Sea ice has ‘declined hardly at all in winter since 2002’. The data show a clear downward trend, and the maximum ice area last year was more than 700,000 km² smaller than 20 years earlier. The changing climate is already affecting both the feeding and breeding of walruses, as numerous scientific studies and Sir David Attenborough’s television programmes have documented”.
That nicely sums up why Thor has made his home on the coast of the UK for a while but apparently, he is now moving back north to his normal habitat. His presence which has fascinated British citizens has highlighted another way global warming is damaging wildlife. I am sure that most fascinated British citizens are unaware of this.
Below are some more articles on global warming.
