Polar Bears are Starving

Thanks to global warming polar bears now risk starvation during their wait for ice to form

news/2010_jan/polar_bear_1
November 2013: Near Churchill, on the edge of Canada’s Hudson Bay, large numbers of polar bears are gathering right now, waiting for the ice to form. You can see mother bears snuggling with cubs, young males wrestling with each other, and large solitary bears ambling across the tundra. This polar bear spectacle is part of their annual migration back out onto the sea ice, where they can finally hunt seals again after summer’s long fast.

However, thanks to global warming, this wait for the ice to form is getting longer and longer and the hungry bears now suffer from malnutrition and starvation—especially females with cubs. Today the loss of sea ice habitat from climate change has become the greatest threat to polar bears. Shrinking sea ice also opens up polar bear habitat to oil and gas development and increased shipping. And ice changes are also forcing bears ashore and into greater conflict with people.

Next month another group will be gathering in Russia, The International Forum on the Conservation of Polar Bears. Forty years ago the range countries signed an agreement on polar bear conservation. Thanks to their forward-thinking commitments, several bear populations have stabilized and largely recovered from the historic threat of over-harvest.

The forum will bring together representatives from polar bear range countries, along with scientists, members of indigenous communities, WWF and other conservation leaders, who will discuss what can be done to address thes issues of climate change, sea ice loss and global warming to help polar bears thrive.

WS

This really does need to be addressed doesnt it. It was kind of addressed by Gordon Bucchanan when he did his polar bear documentary and also by Chris Packham when he did his expedition. The Polar bears are having it very tough and WWF have been trying to help for a while now, lets hope the colaboration of a few conservationists can come up with something. Mind you we can all try and do our bit as well, we dont want to be loosing our Polar Bears.

littlewid-x-

Thanks for that WS. Let's hope the problem can be addressed and something can be done to help save the polar bears before it is too late.

Lai

Nice (if rather distressing) post WS.

I suppose that one of the issues regards climate change is that the results are seen only 10, 20, 30, 40 years after the causes (at least in some cases). So some people even today do not care about these issues much. Well in Australia we were going to be trying to cut down on use of carbon due to human effects on the climate, but these proposals have now been scrapped by the new government. There was going to be an extra tax charged to support the environment, so most people didn't like it.

With the polar bears, is it not so much the loss of the ice itself then that is the issue, but that humans then take over what was their land? Like in effect, are we saying (via Russia) that polar bears could adapt in a warmer climate without ice as long as they were given space?

GR  (sadly this small area of ice seems to depict the situation)