When we hear or read about the disastrous effects of climate change on our environment and our wildlife, it seems distant and abstract, but it quickly becomes real when we see what it does on animals like polar bears.
There is no proof that polar bears are starving to death from climate change, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that warming is causing sea ice to shrink, and it is their main hunting ground.
According to a 2015 study, the polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea had declined by 40% due to loss of sea ice, and another study conducted in 2017 by the US Geological Survey and the The University of Wyoming has shown that bears are also spending more energy walking across a “treadmill” of drifting sea ice caused by warming, so they need more food to compensate.
When photographer Paul Nicklen and filmmakers from conservation group Sea Legacy arrived on Somerset Island—near the larger Baffin Island—in the Canadian Arctic in late summer, they came across a heartbreaking sight: a starving polar bear on its deathbed.
“We stood there crying—filming with tears rolling down our cheeks,” he said.