Warmer climate cycles mean that the sea ice, where walruses traditionally haulout, is shrinking. There are also additional threats of commercial oil and gas exploration and overhunting.
At one time, walruses were the victims of commercial hunting for their blubber and their ivory tusks. This practice was banned several decades ago.
Sokolov explained, “The global warming and melting of ice in the global ocean, in the Arctic Ocean where the ice is getting thinner and it forms later and melts away earlier – all of it can not but affect the walruses.”
The walrus live an average of 40 years. Their only natural predators are the killer whale and the polar bear.
A walrus haulout with this large number of these mammals is a positive sign, it shows their population may be adapting and recovering.
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