'Soul-crushing' video of starving polar bear exposes climate crisis,

experts say

Footage from Canada’s Arctic shows emaciated animal seeking food in scene
that left researchers ‘pushing through their tears’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=58&v=oiC_HG3u-nk&feature=emb_logo

Video footage captured in

Canada’s Arctic has offered a devastating
look at the impact climate change is having
on polar bears in the region, showing an
emaciated bear clinging to life as it
scrounged for food on iceless land.

The scene was recorded by the

conservation group Sea Legacy during a
late summer expedition in Baffin Island.
“My entire Sea Legacy team was pushing
through their tears and emotions while
documenting this dying polar bear,” photographer Paul Nicklen wrote on
social media after publishing the footage this week.

The video shows the bear struggling to walk as it searches for food. The bear
eventually comes across a trashcan used by Inuit fishermen, rummaging
through it with little luck.

The bear, which was not old, probably died within hours of being captured
on video, said Nicklen. “This is what starvation looks like. The muscles
atrophy. No energy. It’s a slow, painful death.”
The film-makers drew a direct line between the bear’s state and climate
change. “As temperatures rise and sea ice melts, polar bears lose access to
the main staple of their diets – seals,” the video noted. “Starving, and
running out of energy, they are forced to wander into human settlements for
any source of food.”

The association echoed a 2015 study from the International Union for
the Conservation of Nature that ranked climate change as the single most
important threat to the world’s 26,000 polar bears. Researchers – who
described the bears as the canary in the coal mine – found a high probability
that the population would decrease 30% by 2050 due to the changes in their
sea ice habitat.

As climate change boosts Arctic temperatures, sea ice – crucial to the bears
for hunting, resting and breeding – is melting earlier in spring and refreezing
later in autumn. The growing number of ice-free days could push the species
past a tipping point with widespread reproductive failure and starvation in
some areas, the report noted.

Satellite data published last year revealed that the number of ice-covered

days across the 19 Arctic regions inhabited by polar bears declined at a rate
of seven to 19 days per decade between 1979 to 2014.

Since posting the footage, Nicklen has been asked why he and his team did
not help the bear. “Of course, that crossed my mind,” he told National
Geographic. “But it’s not like I walk around with a tranquilizer gun or 400
pounds of seal meat.” Feeding polar bears is also illegal in Canada.

“There was no saving this individual bear,” he noted on social media. Instead
he highlighted the threat facing the species as a whole, which has become
emblematic of the ravages of climate change. “The simple truth is this – if
the Earth continues to warm, we will lose bears and entire polar
ecosystems.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/08/starving-polar-bear-arctic-climate-change-
video