Grizzlies and salmon: Too much of a good thing?

Even grizzly bears should watch what they eat. It turns out that grizzlies that gorge themselves on salmon during the summer spawning season have much higher levels of contaminants in their bodies than their cousins who rely more on berries, plants and insects, according to Peter Ross of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Reporting in an article to be published Sept. 15 in the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology, Canadian researchers say the difference in the concentration of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) is “profound” between grizzly bears who eat lots of salmon and those that don’t. The measurements were made by examining hair and fat samples from two groups of grizzly bears in the British Columbia region of Canada. One group included bears that had a steady diet of terrestrial foods, the other group included bears that shifted to marine food when the salmon returned from the Pacific Ocean to spawn.

Although the overall contaminant concentrations in the grizzlies are lower than many other species of animals that consume marine food, the researchers — from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the University of Victoria and Raincoast Conversation Society — say the reproductive window of the bears could be vulnerable to health impacts.

Media Contact

Michael Berstein EurekAlert!

More Information:

http://www.acs.org

All latest news from the category: Ecology, The Environment and Conservation

This complex theme deals primarily with interactions between organisms and the environmental factors that impact them, but to a greater extent between individual inanimate environmental factors.

innovations-report offers informative reports and articles on topics such as climate protection, landscape conservation, ecological systems, wildlife and nature parks and ecosystem efficiency and balance.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors