It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
"Bears are not companions of men, but children of God, and His charity is broad enough for both... We seek to establish a narrow line between ourselves and the feathery zeros we dare to call angels, but ask a partition barrier of infinite width to show the rest of creation its proper place. Yet bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bears days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours and was poured from the same fountain....." John Muir
Last week's local section of The Washington Post celebrated -- yes, celebrated -- the killing of a black bear by an 8-year-old girl. The compassionate among us mourned not just the cruel and completely unnecessary killing of one of nature's most fabulous creatures, but the love of violence and destruction instilled in this child by her family. That certain Americans sadly find valor in killing is beyond doubt. But in many ways, it's also beyond belief. That they would take pleasure in a wantonly destructive act and train this into an 8-year-old female heart is beyond forgiveness. We've heard it all before. Hunters love nature. Hunters work to preserve wildlife. Hunters are great stewards of the environment. Hunters eat what they kill. What was the justification here? That enough bears exist in Maryland to kill them off without destroying the species, as mankind once almost did. Only cowards could find solace, justification and pride in that. There's no sport in taking down a large, lumbering animal with a .243 caliber rifle, the kind used by the young girl portrayed in worshipful prose by the Post. That's the same caliber weapon NATO uses in its assault weapons. There's more technology than sport in today's high-powered, scoped weapons. (The Post did not report whether the rifle she used was scoped or not.)
Polar bears sometimes bludgeon walruses to death with stones or ice
It’s long been said that a piece of ice is the perfect murder weapon In this illustration, which appears in an 1865 book by adventurer Charles Francis Hall, a polar bear uses a rock as a tool to kill a walrus. Some have thought that Inuit reports of this behavior were just stories, but new research suggests not. CHARLES FRANCIS HALL, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Walruses, weighing as much as 1,300 kilograms with huge tusks and nearly impenetrable skulls, are almost impossible for a hungry polar bear to kill. But new research suggests that some polar bears have invented a work-around — bashing walruses on the head with a block of stone or ice.
For more than 200 years, Inuit in Greenland and the eastern Canadian Arctic have told stories of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) using such tools to aid in killing walruses. Yet explorers, naturalists and writers often dismissed such accounts, relegating them to myth along with tales about shape-shifting bears.
The persistence of these reports, including one report from an Inuk hunter in the late 1990s, coupled with photos of a male polar bear named GoGo at a Japanese zoo using tools to obtain suspended meat compelled Ian Stirling and colleagues to investigate further.
“It’s been my general observation that if an experienced Inuit hunter tells you that he’s seen something, it’s worth listening to and very likely to be correct,” says Stirling, one of the world’s leading polar bear biologists
The researchers reviewed historical, secondhand observations of tool use in polar bears reported by Inuit hunters to explorers and naturalists as well as recent observations by Inuit hunters and non-Inuit researchers and documented observations of GoGo and brown bears — polar bears’ closest relatives — using tools in captivity to access food. This review suggests that tool use in wild polar bears, though infrequent, does occur in the case of hunting walruses because of their large size, the researchers report in the June Arctic.
“Really, the only species you would want to bonk on the head with a piece of ice would be a walrus,” says Andrew Derocher, director of the Polar Bear Science Lab at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who wasn’t involved with the new study. He suspects that it might just be a few polar bears that do this behavior. For example, if a mother bear figured out how to use ice or stone in this way, “it’s something her offspring would pick up on,” but not necessarily a skill polar bears across the Arctic would acquire, he says.
Among animals, using tools to solve problems has long been regarded as a marker of a higher level of what humans consider intelligence. Notoriously smart chimpanzees, for example, craft spears to hunt smaller mammals (SN: 2/28/07). Dolphins carry marine sponges in their mouths to stir sand and uncover prey (SN: 6/8/05). And elephants have been known to drop logs or large rocks onto electric fences to cut off the power supply.
Studies on the cognitive abilities of polar bears are lacking. “We don’t know anything experimental or objective at all,” Stirling says. “However, we have a great deal of observational information that tends to suggest polar bears are really smart.”
Members of the bear family, Ursidae, are typically assumed to have strong cognitive skills as a result oftheir large brains and evidenced by their sophisticated hunting strategies. Studies on captive American black bears have even revealed some mental capabilities that appear to exceed those of primates.
This sculpture in the Itsanitaq Museum in Churchill, Canada shows a polar bear lifting a block of ice above the head of a sleeping walrus.
GLORIA DICKIE
Gabriel Nirlungayuk, an Inuk hunter of Rankin Inlet in Nunavut, Canada, says he has heard such stories of polar bears using tools to hunt walruses. “I’ve seen polar bears since I was probably 7 years old. I’ve been around them, I’ve hunted alongside them, and I have seen their behaviors. The smartest hunters are usually the female bears.” Sometimes, he says, polar bears will trick young seals to come closer by pretending to be asleep in open water. Other times he’s observed that a polar bear can sniff out a seal’s breathing hole in ice, even if it’s obscured by snow.
“I have worked with the Inuit on traditional knowledge for a very long time and one of my favorite subjects is polar bears, because science often suggests one thing and the Inuit say another thing,” he notes.
There are around 26,000 wild polar bears living in 19 subpopulations across the Arctic and sub-Arctic. The bears primarily eat seals, hunting the marine mammals by staking out above their breathing holes. Because of climate change, Arctic sea ice is fast disappearing, and scientists predict that many polar bear populations will be extinct by the century’s end. Desperate polar bears may increasingly attack walruses, but “there are limitations to how many walruses an adult bear can take down,” says coauthor Kristin Laidre, an Arctic ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. It takes a lot of energy.
Following publication of the new study, Stirling received a video from U.S. Geological Survey scientist Anthony Pagano, based in Anchorage, Alaska, who had previously attached a GoPro camera to a wild polar bear for a separate project. That footage, Stirling says, shows a female polar bear sliding a large block of ice around before throwing it into the water at a seal.
Monday, June 19, 2023
HEY MISTER LEAVE THOSE BEARS ALONE
Why grizzly bears will start to be trapped in parts of Yellowstone
Hillary Andrews Sun, June 18, 2023
BOZEMAN, Mont. – Scientists will start capturing grizzly bears Monday to study in the greater Yellowstone National Park area. The baiting and trapping operations will continue through August 31 in parts of the Custer Gallatin National Forest as well as private lands.
"Research and monitoring of the grizzly bear population is vital to ongoing recovery and management of grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem," said the U.S. Forest Service in a statement.
Grizzlies, once found throughout western North America, were reduced to surviving in only 2% of their historic range by the 1960s, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1973, the Department of the Interior formed the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team and Committee.
The green represents the historic range of the Grizzlies and the yellow represents the species current range.
Its findings prompted the lower 48 to list the animal as threatened under the Endangered Species Act due to population and range reduction due to human impact in 1975.
"In the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Grizzly bear numbers had declined to perhaps fewer than 250," stated the USGS in a preservation video.
After almost 50 years of research, the bears are making a comeback. The USGS said it could be the largest collection of scientific evidence on any bear species in the world
A female grizzly bear exits Pelican Creek October 8, 2012 in the Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. "Today, the study team estimates that the population has rebounded to a minimum of 700," the USGS continued. "And these bears are now delisted from the Endangered Species Act, though much of the credit goes to the grizzly bear and its resilience over decades of management and landscape changes. Rigorous science that informs effective management decisions is also part of the equation."
Biologists will bait foot snares and culvert traps with natural food like road-kill elk and deer, the Forest Service said. Culvert traps are cages or enclosures with one open end that closes when the bait is pulled.
The committee recommends radio-collaring at least 25 adult females annually. They also collar male bears.
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING, UNITED STATES - 2017/06/02: A Mother Grizzly and her cub walk through a meadow in Yellowstone National Park. (Photo by Will Powers/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
"Data collected from radio-marked bears provide information necessary for tracking key population parameters," stated the USGS on its site. "By observing radio-collared bears, we document age of first reproduction, average litter size, cub and yearling survival, how often a female produces a litter, and causes of mortality. These data allow us to estimate survival among different sex and age classes of bears."
Grizzlies can weigh up to 600 pounds and eat over 200 food items, including plants, animals and fungi. A bear can live up to 30 years, but they reproduce slowly, said the USGS.
"Since the mid-1980s, science has shown that Yellowstone grizzly bears have increased in number and expanded their range, ensuring the future viability of grizzly bears in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem will require continued public engagement, along with the reliable scientific information that assists wildlife managers in conserving the Yellowstone grizzly bear," explained the USGS.
Officials placed bright yellow signs in baited areas.
The study team conducts similar capture operations in other national parks.
Bear with me here as I pun around some great news for Ursus Major. A sancturary for bears and the ancient forest has been declared in B.C.; Great Bear Rainforest.
In the 21st century, most mentions of polar bears conjure images of stranded bears, on exposed beaches or drifting ice sheets as glaciers melt away into the ocean. The harsh conditions of the rapidly-changing Arctic don’t make it easy for animals to raise the next generation of youngsters, and raising a polar bear cub is a lot of work.
However, polar bears do not meet any of these prerequisites for the evolution of alloparenting. They are solitary, live at low densities far from other groups, and raise cubs that impose a large energetic cost due to their prolonged care. So, why do they do it?
One possible explanation is that new moms gain valuable parenting experience through adoption, increasing the probability of success for a subsequent litter. But this doesn’t seem to be supported by research. The most likely explanation is that polar bears haven’t developed the cognitive ability to keep track of the number or identity of their own cubs. Solitary polar bears don’t cross paths very often, so it’s usually safe for a mother to assume that any cubs within an arm’s reach are hers… with the caveat that she won’t notice if one of her cubs has just wandered into the group and doesn’t belong. It’s also possible that mothers who have lost their own cubs recently are biologically predisposed to parenting, and will adopt any cubs that come her way as her own.
Either way, it looks like this curious case of cub adoption is just another example of an energetically costly mistake, rather than a heartwarming instance of altruism and concern. In the wild, it’s still every parent for themselves in the struggle to survive, and pass their genes to the next generation.
The Estimation of Survival and Litter Size of Polar Bear Cubs By: Douglas P. Demaster and Ian Stirling Bears: Their Biology and Management, Vol. 5, A Selection of Papers from the Fifth International Conference on Bear Research and Management, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, February 1980 (1983), pp. 260-263 International Association for Bear Research and Management
The Status and Conservation of Bears (Ursidae) of the World: 1970 By: I. McTaggart Cowan Bears: Their Biology and Management, Vol. 2, A Selection of Papers from the Second International Conference on Bear Research and Management, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 6-9 November 1970. IUCN Publications New Series no. 23 (1972), pp. 343-367 International Association for Bear Research and Management
Wabusk of the Omushkegouk: Cree-Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus) Interactions in Northern Ontario By: Raynald Harvey Lemelin, Martha Dowsley, Brian Walmark, Franz Siebel, Louis Bird, George Hunter, Tommy Myles, Maurice Mack, Matthew Gull, Matthew Kakekaspan, The Washaho First Nation at Fort Severn and The Weenusk First Nation at Peawanuck Human Ecology, Vol. 38, No. 6 (DECEMBER 2010), pp. 803-815 Springer
MAX DELBRÜCK CENTER FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE IN THE HELMHOLTZ ASSOCIATION
IMAGE: GRIZZLY BEARS' MUSCLES MANAGE TO SURVIVE HIBERNATION VIRTUALLY UNHARMED. RESEARCHERS ARE TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE MECHANISMS BEHIND THIS ABILITY IN ORDER TO HELP BEDRIDDEN PATIENTS. view more
CREDIT: GOTTHARDT LAB, MDC
Grizzly bears spend many months in hibernation, but their muscles do not suffer from the lack of movement. In the journal "Scientific Reports", a team led by Michael Gotthardt reports on how they manage to do this. The grizzly bears' strategy could help prevent muscle atrophy in humans as well.
A grizzly bear only knows three seasons during the year. Its time of activity starts between March and May. Around September the bear begins to eat large quantities of food. And sometime between November and January, it falls into hibernation. From a physiological point of view, this is the strangest time of all. The bear's metabolism and heart rate drop rapidly. It excretes neither urine nor feces. The amount of nitrogen in the blood increases drastically and the bear becomes resistant to the hormone insulin.
A person could hardly survive this four-month phase in a healthy state. Afterwards, he or she would most likely have to cope with thromboses or psychological changes. Above all, the muscles would suffer from this prolonged period of disuse. Anyone who has ever had an arm or leg in a cast for a few weeks or has had to lie in bed for a long time due to an illness has probably experienced this.
A little sluggish, but otherwise fine
Not so the grizzly bear. In the spring, the bear wakes up from hibernation, perhaps still a bit sluggish at first, but otherwise well. Many scientists have long been interested in the bear's strategies for adapting to its three seasons.
A team led by Professor Michael Gotthardt, head of the Neuromuscular and Cardiovascular Cell Biology group at the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin, has now investigated how the bear's muscles manage to survive hibernation virtually unharmed. The scientists from Berlin, Greifswald and the United States were particularly interested in the question of which genes in the bear's muscle cells are transcribed and converted into proteins, and what effect this has on the cells.
Understanding and copying the tricks of nature
"Muscle atrophy is a real human problem that occurs in many circumstances. We are still not very good at preventing it," says the lead author of the study, Dr. Douaa Mugahid, once a member of Gotthardt's research group and now a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Professor Marc Kirschner of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
"For me, the beauty of our work was to learn how nature has perfected a way to maintain muscle functions under the difficult conditions of hibernation," says Mugahid. "If we can better understand these strategies, we will be able to develop novel and non-intuitive methods to better prevent and treat muscle atrophy in patients."
Gene sequencing and mass spectrometry
To understand the bears' tricks, the team led by Mugahid and Gotthardt examined muscle samples from grizzly bears both during and between the times of hibernation, which they had received from Washington State University. "By combining cutting-edge sequencing techniques with mass spectrometry, we wanted to determine which genes and proteins are upregulated or shut down both during and between the times of hibernation," explains Gotthardt.
"This task proved to be tricky - because neither the full genome nor the proteome, i.e., the totality of all proteins of the grizzly bear, were known," says the MDC scientist. In a further step, he and his team compared the findings with observations of humans, mice and nematode worms.
Non-essential amino acids allowed muscle cells to grow
As the researchers reported in the journal "Scientific Reports", they found proteins in their experiments that strongly influence a bear's amino acid metabolism during hibernation. As a result, its muscle cells contain higher amounts of certain non-essential amino acids (NEAAs).
"In experiments with isolated muscle cells of humans and mice that exhibit muscle atrophy, cell growth could also be stimulated by NEAAs," says Gotthardt, adding that "it is known, however, from earlier clinical studies that the administration of amino acids in the form of pills or powders is not enough to prevent muscle atrophy in elderly or bedridden people."
"Obviously, it is important for the muscle to produce these amino acids itself - otherwise the amino acids might not reach the places where they are needed," speculates the MDC scientist. A therapeutic starting point, he says, could be the attempt to induce the human muscle to produce NEAAs itself by activating corresponding metabolic pathways with suitable agents during longer rest periods.
Tissue samples from bedridden patients
In order to find out which signaling pathways need to be activated in the muscle, Gotthardt and his team compared the activity of genes in grizzly bears, humans and mice. The required data came from elderly or bedridden patients and from mice suffering from muscle atrophy - for example, as a result of reduced movement after the application of a plaster cast. "We wanted to find out which genes are regulated differently between animals that hibernate and those that do not," explains Gotthardt.
However, the scientists came across a whole series of such genes. To narrow down the possible candidates that could prove to be a starting point for muscle atrophy therapy, the team subsequently carried out experiments with nematode worms. "In worms, individual genes can be deactivated relatively easily and one can quickly see what effects this has on muscle growth," explains Gotthardt.
A gene for circadian rhythms
With the help of these experiments, his team has now found a handful of genes whose influence they hope to further investigate in future experiments with mice. These include the genes Pdk4 and Serpinf1, which are involved in glucose and amino acid metabolism, and the gene Rora, which contributes to the development of circadian rhythms. "We will now examine the effects of deactivating these genes," says Gotthardt. "After all, they are only suitable as therapeutic targets if there are either limited side effects or none at all."
###
Literature
Douaa Mugahid et al. (2019): "Proteomic and Transcriptomic Changes in Hibernating Grizzly Bears Reveal Metabolic and Signaling Pathways that Protect against Muscle Atrophy," Scientific Reports, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-56007-8
Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC)
The Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) was founded in Berlin in 1992. It is named for the German-American physicist Max Delbrueck, who was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The MDC's mission is to study molecular mechanisms in order to understand the origins of disease and thus be able to diagnose, prevent, and fight it better and more effectively. In these efforts the MDC cooperates with Charite - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) as well as with national partners such as the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) and numerous international research institutions. More than 1,600 staff and guests from nearly 60 countries work at the MDC, just under 1,300 of them in scientific research. The MDC is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (90 percent) and the State of Berlin (10 percent), and is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. http://www.mdc-berlin.de
Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050 — and the entire population gone from Alaska — because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.
Only in the northern Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland are any of the world's 16,000 polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the scientific arm of the Interior Department.
As climate change thins sea ice around the Arctic, making travel by snowmobile during the spring precarious even for practiced hunters, one solution may be to borrow technology from the swampy Everglades of Florida.
Arctic Kingdom Marine Expeditions is reporting success in using airboats to guide tours to the floe edge outside Pond Inlet this summer.
The estimate is based on a study of national and international computer models keeping the period 1979-1999 as a base. An earlier report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had found that sea loss was greater in the summer in Arctic Sea located north of Alaska, Canada and Asia.
The IPCC report had placed the blame on greenhouse gases and had said that unless these emissions were controlled, the Arctic Sea would almost disappear by the turn of the century.
About 40 percent of the floating ice that normally blankets the top of the world during the summer will be gone by 2050, says James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. Earlier studies had predicted it would be nearly a century before that much ice vanished.
"This is a major change," Overland said. "This is actually moving the threshold up.
"If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said it wouldn't happen until 2070 or 2100," said Serreze, who was not involved in Overland's project.
Even a 40 percent loss of ice would be devastating to ice-dependent animals such as walruses and ringed seals, said Overland, who shared his data with federal officials considering an endangered-species listing for polar bears.
Gray whales will suffer if the ice-loving crustaceans they feed on disappear. But some commercially important fish species, like pollock and salmon, could thrive in warmer water — a possible boon for the Seattle-based fishing fleet that plies Alaska's Bering Sea. There are also hints, though, that the disappearance of ice would favor predators that undermine fisheries, Overland said.
Shipping will benefit if the Northwest Passage across the Canadian Arctic melts out each summer — as it did for the first time this year.
Of course that is why we are having the international race to declare sovereignty over the arctic because heck there is a silver lining to global warming after all.
"We think it's a great frontier ...." Fox says. "The belief is that about 25 percent of the world's remaining reserves are in the Arctic. And I think it's a major play for us."
Even the climate seemed to be cooperating with that major play. Polar ice retreated this summer from the spot where Shell plans to explore for oil.
Shell would hardly need its reinforced hulls, or rented Russian icebreakers.
The effects of burning fossil fuels today will extend long beyond the next couple of hundred years, possibly delaying the onset of Earth's next ice age, more properly called a glacial period, says researcher Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
European weapons in Sudan (1/5): Bulgarian mortar shells in Darfur’s desert
From a Bulgarian factory to Sudanese militias, the FRANCE 24 Observers team reveals how European-made ammunition ended up on the Sudanese battlefield despite a European Union embargo on sending weapons to this war-torn country. This five-part investigation starts in the middle of the desert, with a series of videos filmed last November by Sudanese fighters.
The videos, posted to X and Facebook on November 21, 2024, show Sudanese militants in camouflage poring over piles of documents that include identity papers, photos and religious images. The militants are from the Joint Forces, a coalition of armed groups that are active in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. This group provides support to the Sudanese army in its fight against the rebel group the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The militants who are filming these videos have just captured a convoy of several vehicles in the middle of the desert. In the images, they seem confused.
At one point, one of the militants shown in the video examines a passport.
“What country is this?” he asks, in Zaghawa, a language spoken in Darfur. Then he picks up an image of a Catholic saint and says, “Look, they are Jews working for an international organisation,” clearly confusing the two religions.
“These people will do anything, even come to die here in Sudan,” he continues. “They’ve come to support the RSF.” The militant claims many times that the owners of the passports, who have allegedly been wounded or captured by his unit, are “mercenaries”. There are no prisoners or bodies shown in the footage.
On several occasions in the video, you can see two of the passports that the Sudanese militants are examining. This allows us to answer at least one of the militant’s questions: both passports belong to Colombian nationals.
Two large wooden crates marked with an orange diamond-shaped label depicting an explosion, the international symbol for explosives, also appear in the video. They are filled with cylinders and labelled, in English, “81 mm Mortars HE”.
The man then pounds his fist on a vehicle that has apparently also been captured.
“The Emirates sent that, too,” he says.
A few hours after these videos first appeared online, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), one of the armed groups that is part of the Joint Forces, posted a statement on Facebook about the weapons that had been seized. Through these statements, we were able to learn a bit more about why two foreign nationals were traversing the Darfur desert with this ammunition.
“In the desert region on the border between Sudan, Libya and Chad, the Joint Forces thwarted a massive attempt at weapons smuggling to the terrorist militia the Rapid Support Forces (RSF),” reads a statement posted on the group’s Facebook page.
The SLM also reveals that the “mercenaries” were found to be carrying money from the UAE.
The SLM doesn’t say anything about the fates of the Colombian men suspected to be mercenaries— whether they have been captured, killed or wounded.
The FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to discover much more about where the weapons seized by the Joint Forces came from, thanks to the footage filmed and posted online. It turns out that the weapons are from the European Union. They were manufactured in Bulgaria and bought by an Emirati company. Before being intercepted by the Joint Forces in Sudan, the convoy transporting the weapons passed through eastern Libya, a zone that is controlled by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an ally of the UAE.
The UAE has been accused in the past by UN experts of providing the Rapid Support Forces with military and financial aid to preserve its own geopolitical and economic interests in the region. However, Emirati authorities have always denied these accusations.
The Rapid Support Forces Are Accused Of Multiple attacks Against Civilians. Some Of Them Have Already Been Documented By The FRANCE 24 Observers team.
European weapons made in Bulgaria
The labels stamped on the cylindrical containers indicate they hold mortar shells. Four seconds into this video filmed by militants with the Joint Forces on November 21, you can see the labels stamped on the cylinders containing the mortar shells. It explains that they are “81mm Mortar [shells]”.
“These weapons are very common in every conflict, and certainly extremely common in all of the conflicts that have taken place in Sudan for decades,” says Mike Lewis, a specialist in armed conflicts and former member of the United Nations panel of experts on Sudan. “Mortar bombs [or shells] are explosives that are fired from a short cylinder, normally along a high parabola trajectory. So it goes up quite a long way and then descends.”
The footage filmed on November 21 shows a man opening one of the crates containing the mortar shells and zooming in on a label that reads: “BG-RSE-0082-HT".
The letters, which are seared into the wooden crate, are an ISPM-15 code that is mandatory for goods transported in wood packaging. The first two letters of the code indicate the country of origin: “BG” stands for Bulgaria.
There is another clue pointing to Bulgaria. While the label on the box is written in French and English, it bears two names written in Cyrillic that presumably belong to workers in the factory where the weapons were manufactured. Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic and both names are common for women in Bulgaria.
M-6 indicates a type of detonator that launches ammunition, while “81 mm Mortar HE” describes the ammunition, which measures 81 mm and is highly explosive. The “1+3 increment charges” refers to the number of propellant charges frequently found on this type of ammunition.
Each of these components has a 6-digit number that enables them to be traced. And all the numbers in the videos start with “46”. The FRANCE 24 Observers team spoke to a weapons expert who explained that in Bulgaria’s identification system, a number beginning with “46” indicates that the weapons were manufactured by the Bulgarian company Dunarit. He said that the number “19”, the final two digits of the number, indicate that the weapons were manufactured in 2019. This can be cross-referenced with the label on the crate.
Moreover, when we looked at the company’s social media accounts, we saw photos of mortar shells packed into a wooden crate, just like the ones that appear in the video filmed in Sudan. Both crates shown in Dunarit’s photos and the ones that appear in the footage have the code ISPM-15 stamped on them. The number is written in the same format as those on the ammunition found in Sudan.
Our team contacted the CEO of Dunarit, Petar Petrov, who doesn’t deny that these mortar shells were manufactured by his company. We spoke to him on the phone after we had earlier shown him screen grabs from the videos:
The regulations on this kind of thing are very strict in Bulgaria. According to my information, everything in this contract [Editor’s note: the contract that allowed for the weapons to be exported] was done according to the rules.
He said that he found it difficult to believe that mortar shells manufactured by his company were found in Sudan and contested the veracity of the videos filmed on November 21. Bombs that violate the European Union’s embargo on Sudan
But how did these bombs manufactured in Bulgaria, a country belonging to the European Union, end up in a supply convoy going to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces?
“The sale, supply, transfer or export of arms and related material of all types, including weapons and ammunition, … to Sudan by nationals of Member States or from the territories of Member States... shall be prohibited whether originating or not in their territories,” the latest embargo states.
Nicolas Marsh is a specialist in arms exportation at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo:
There is an European Union arms embargo on Sudan that definitely covers this kind of equipment. There is a very clear EU policy. There are some exceptions, but I can’t see how a transfer that was going on to Sudan could possibly be covered by those exceptions. It is definitely a violation of the European Union policy.
Bulgaria has strongly rejected claims these weapons were sent directly from Bulgaria to Sudan.
The Interministerial Commission on Export Control, the Bulgarian authority that approves arms exportations, said by email that the weapons were sold with “suitable authorisation” to a “government of a country on which no sanctions are imposed.” They "denied categorically that the relevant Bulgarian authorities delivered export permits to Sudan” for these munitions.
As we continued our investigation, we did indeed establish that Dunarit’s mortar shells were not exported directly to Sudan. They were, however, sold to the International Golden Group — an Emirati company known for transfering weapons to zones under international embargo.
European weapons in Sudan (2/5): A €50 million Emirati contract
From a Bulgarian factory to Sudanese militias, the FRANCE 24 Observers team reveals how European-made ammunition ended up on the Sudanese battlefield, despite a European Union embargo on sending weapons to this war-torn country. This second article in our five-part investigation focuses on International Golden Group, an Emirati company known for its involvement in diverting arms to countries under international embargo.
Recap of the first article in our series: On November 21, 2024, Sudanese fighters filmed what they said was a shipment of mortar shells bound for the Rapid Support Forces, the militia that is fighting against the Sudanese Army in the ongoing civil war. These weapons, manufactured in Bulgaria, were shipped to Sudan despite the European Union embargo on sending weapons to this war-torn country. We’ve been investigating how this happened.
How did European bombs get to a Sudanese battlefield, despite an EU embargo on shipping weapons there? After identifying the Bulgarian company that manufactured the mortar shells, Dunarit, the FRANCE 24 Observers team tried to trace the history of these weapons. We questioned the Interministerial Commission on Export Control, the Bulgarian authority that oversees arms exportations.
Initially, the commission did not disclose where the mortar bombs shown in the video filmed on November 21, 2024 in Sudan had been exported. All they said was that they “had not issued an export permit to Sudan”.
“The export permit was issued to the government of a country that is not subject to UN Security Council sanctions,” they added. “The relevant Bulgarian authorities were informed of the delivery of the goods and the original delivery certificate for the final destination of these products was provided.”
But the FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to obtain a copy of this delivery certificate from a source who asked to remain anonymous. The document, issued on August 16, 2020 by the “United Arab Emirates G.H.Q. [General Headquarters] Armed Forces”, provides a lot of information about the transaction. We learned that the “final destination" or end user of the Bulgarian mortar bombs was supposed to be the armed forces of the UAE.
This document shows just how large the shipment of mortar bombs was: 15,000 bombs measuring 81 mm (like those seen in the videos from November 21, 2024 filmed in Sudan) but also 2,780 bombs measuring 60 mm, 30,000 measuring 82 mm and 11,464 bombs measuring 120 mm, a much more powerful calibre.
The arms were delivered to the Emirati Army in two shipments, in January and February 2020. Moreover, the document lists two companies, as well as the General Headquarters of the Army: a Bulgarian “supplier”, ARM-BG Ltd., and an Emirati “importer”, International Golden Group PJSC. The manufacturer, Dunarit, isn’t mentioned.
Our team was able to corroborate this information with a second document, which we obtained from a separate source with access to information supplied by the Emirati Army on the arms sale. This subsequent document, called an end-user certificate, is a guarantee to the manufacturer and regulators in the country where the armaments came from that the final user of the weapons has been verified.
This certificate also allows the end user to make a number of binding commitments, including whether or not they are permitted to re-export weapons.
In this case, the certificate was issued by the Emirati Army, who is also listed as the end user. It features the same contract number, supplier and importer as the first one.
“It is a reasonable assumption that these two documents are part of the same transaction,” says Nicholas Marsh, a researcher specialised in arms exports at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo. 'The end user did not let us know that there would be any kind of re-exportation. I don’t know what happened afterwards.'
On the end-user certificate, dated October 2019, the Emirati Army agrees that it will use the weapons for its own needs and that they “will never be transferred, re-exported, lent, rented out or handed to third parties or countries without written consent of the authorised bodies of Bulgaria…”
Our team asked the Bulgarian Interministerial Commission on Export Control if they had agreed that the weapons be re-exported to Sudan or elsewhere. They reiterated that they “had not issued a permit to export the weapons to Sudan.”
The CEO of Dunarit, Petar Petrov, went into further detail during a phone call with our team:
On the documents, you see the destination country, but also the company [Editor’s note: International Golden Group], it’s a public company. We don’t have restrictions on exports to the United Arab Emirates and that is what our commission looked into. By law, if the end user decides to re-export the weapons, they need to let all parties involved in the transaction know — the manufacturer, the commission, everyone. In this case, they didn’t do that. I don’t know what happened afterwards.
The end user certificate also refers to a much larger quantity of bombs than the first document: 105,000 mortar bombs versus a little less than 60,000 listed in the first document.
Expert Nicholas Marsh says that there is nothing unusual about this. “That's to make it easier for them if they have other deliveries. That way, they don't have to go back and ask for a new licence,” he said. “We can't be sure that the difference between the number on the delivery verification certificate and the number on the end-user certificate [Editor’s note: a little over 45,000 mortar bombs] was effectively delivered.” A contract worth around 50 million euros
Marsh estimated that the total price for these 105,000 mortar bombs would be around 50 million euros.
This kind of shipment would be consistent with a large non-state armed group. This is a serious amount of ammunition for this type of group. However, for a national government involved in a war, it would be pretty small.
Our team was able to run Marsh’s estimates by the Omega Research Foundation, a network of researchers specialising in identifying and exposing human rights abuses committed across the world by people using police, security, and military equipment. They agreed that this number was verifiable.
An arms sale of 50 million euros would be a big deal for Bulgaria. According to data collected by the European network against arms trade, Bulgarian exports to the United Arab Emirates was valued at between 10 and 30 million euros annually from 2015 to 2020.
In 2019, the year of the transaction, this figure leapt to 83 million euros. In this year, the sale of 105,000 mortar bombs likely represented more than half of the value of Bulgarian exports to the UAE. ARM-BG, the Bulgarian intermediary
The Bulgarian Interministerial Commission on Export Control maintained in numerous exchanges with our team that Bulgaria respects all agreements on export control and has a responsible national policy.
However, the profiles of the parties involved in this sale raise serious questions. There is very little information available about ARM-BG, the Bulgarian exporter, though this company does indeed have an official licence to export and import arms.
According to information available on the specialist website Orbis, the company only has four employees and seems to have made most of its profits during the two years when the Dunarit arms sale was taking place. Its revenue rose to more than 78 million US dollars in 2019, then 106 million in 2020, before dropping sharply to 6 million dollars in 2021, the year when ARM-BG went into severe deficit. It seems to have lost nearly 3.5 million dollars.
We spoke to Arsen Nazaria, a manager at ARM-BG, who insisted that the transaction his company undertook was legal:
The application for the export permit issuance for the UAE End user was submitted by ARM-BG Ltd. to the Interministerial Commission for Export Control [...] and contained all the data and documentation mandated by Bulgarian and European legislation and UN regulations.
Speaking with our team on the phone, he added: “We are a brokerage company. We don’t export or import ourselves, nor do we deal with the goods.” However, in the documents provided by the Emiratis to the Bulgarian authorities, ARM-BG is listed as the “exporter” or “supplier”.
We contacted ARM-BG a second time, but they declined to comment further. The Interministerial Commission for Export Control said that they had “no proof of Arm BG Ltd.’s involvement in shipments to illegitimate final users or in illegal plans to re-export.” International Golden Group, the Emirati buyer linked to diverting weapons
The other company listed on the documents is International Golden Group. It is listed as the “importer” of these weapons into the United Arab Emirates. Helen Close, a researcher specialising in armaments at Omega Research Foundation, was able to gather information about the company through its activities in the weapons market in the UAE.
International Golden Group was created in 2002 and we think that it was a private or semi-private company, but it definitely had links to the [Emirati] government. In 2017, it stated that it was a leading supplier to the UAE Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior.
Tony Fortin at the Lyon-based Observatory for Armament, an organisation that specialises in monitoring arms sales and companies in the sector, says:
International Golden Group has a very bad reputation, it is well known, including among manufacturers in the sector. It is a company that has a reputation for functioning as sort of a state within the Emirate state, and is used to manage arms movements without regard for transparency.
Every year, the panel completes a general report on the situation in Libya and tries to identify the countries, companies, and individuals who violate this embargo.
In its report from 2013, International Golden Group was identified as a key party in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of Albanian-made weapons' cartridges to Benghazi, in eastern Libya.
“International Golden Group represented the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates in the deal,” the report states.
International Golden Group was mentioned all the way back in a 2013 report by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya. The report stated that the company (whose name is visible in the orange box) represented the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates in the purchase of Albanian cartridges, which were actually then illegally re-exported to Benghazi, in eastern Libya. UN Panel of Experts on Libya
International Golden Group is identified in several other reports by the panel. Reports from 2016, 2022 and 2023 all mention that the group has acted in violation of the UN embargo on exporting weapons to Libya.
The report from 2022 mentions Serbian-made 120 mm mortar bombs. One of these bombs was used to booby-trap a civilian home in Tripoli in November 2020 when General Khalifa Haftar, the military leader of eastern Libya, led a massive incursion on the Tripoli region, which was then under the control of the UN-recognised Libyan government. Haftar had support in this offensive from the UAE as well as the Russian paramilitary Wagner group.
In the same report, the panel goes into further detail on the 2013 case: “Although the end user was falsely declared as the United Arab Emirates [Editor’s note: on the document provided by International Golden Group], the ammunition was shipped by air directly to Benghazi, Libya" from the Albanese territory.
The flight that carried the weapons was chartered by an intermediary and while the flight plan showed the United Arab Emirates as the final destination, it was changed at the last minute to Libya.
The 2016 report details how the panel demanded Bulgaria trace how rifles manufactured in their country ended up in Libya.
“The Bulgarian authorities informed the Panel that the International Golden Group originally imported the weapons and that the end user was the UAE Armed Forces,” the Panel says.
The Bulgarian authorities have known since at least 2016 that weapons sold to International Golden Group, supposedly on behalf of the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates, might be illegally re-exported — that’s a full three years before the UAE sent the Bulgarian authorities the first documents on the purchase of mortar bombs manufactured by Dunarit.
"What should happen [in this kind of situation] is as soon as Bulgaria knows about this, they should share the information with other European governments,” Marsh said.
And then they should stop using IGG. They should also be very careful about exporting anything to the United Arab Emirates. But that isn't happening nearly as much as it should.
Our team asked the Bulgarian Interministerial Commission for Export Control if, when they authorised the export of Dunarit bombs to the UAE in 2019, they were aware of the many cases documented by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya and its findings that International Golden Group was illegally diverting weapons. They did not respond to our questions.
Our team was not able to trace the final leg of the Bulgarian weapons’ journey to the battlefield in Sudan — if, indeed, they were exported by International Golden Group to zones in eastern Libya under the control of General Haftar. We put these questions to both the Bulgarian Interministerial Commission on Export Control and International Golden Group. Neither responded to our questions.
But that wasn’t the end of the road. We were able to learn more about the weapons transfer by tracing the path of one of the men who was part of the weapons' convoy that brought the Bulgarian armaments to Sudan. His Colombian passport can be seen in the videos from November 21, 2024.
