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Hungry Polar Bears Are Eating Garbage Instead of Seals As Their Habitats Melt Away
Hungry Polar Bears Are Eating Garbage Instead of Seals As Their Habitats Melt Away
As climate change erodes the icy habitats of polar bears, they are left stranded from their
usual food sources for longer periods of time. So instead of filling up on seals, a new study
has found that polar bears are supplementing their diets with garbage, which is expected to
A new report from Canadian and U.S. scientists published in the journal Onyx outlines how
polar bears are beginning to turn to humans’ trash as a food source, which could lead to
more regular and/or unpredictable human-polar bear conflicts as the animals search for food.
“Bears and garbage are a bad association,” said study co-author Andrew Derocher, a
biologist at the University of Alberta, as reported by Reuters. “We know that very well from a
brown bear and black bear perspective, and now it’s an issue developing with polar bears.”
Polar bears usually hunt seals, but they need ice to do so. As temperatures rise and the ice
melts earlier and refreezes later, polar bears are stuck on shore for longer amounts of time.
Their time to hunt is shortening, leaving the animals hungry. So they turn to landfills and
other sources of garbage to satiate their hunger, similar to the way brown bears and black
Polar bears, which are considered vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of
Nature (IUCN) Red List, have been recently spotted in several Arctic communities looking for
food. In February 2019, the report stated there was a “mass invasion” of polar bears in
Belushya Guba, Novaya Zemlya, Russia, when 52 polar bears came to feed in an open
Another 60 polar bears were found scavenging in an open dump in the 600-person village of
Ryrkaypiy, Chukotka, Russia in December 2019. The bears remained in the area until the
wrappers.
“Bears don’t know all the negatives that come with plastic ingestion and the diseases and
toxins they’re likely exposed to in a (landfill) setting,” Geoff York, study co-author and senior
But their proximity to humans and potential for conflict is a big risk. People may kill the polar
bears to protect their communities. Scientists expect these risks to rise in the coming years
as global temperatures continue to rise and human populations extend farther into the Arctic.
For example, the human population of Nunavut, Canada is slated to grow 31% from 2014 to
While waste management could help, it can be a challenge for these remote, Arctic
communities. The ground is too cold to bury the trash, and the cost to haul the trash away is
too high.
enforcement and the provision of adequate resources at the community level are required to
mitigate this potentially increasing problem,” the study said, noting that measures taken to
reduce conflicts between brown and black bears and humans could be replicated for polar
bears. Scientists also say federal funding will be important to providing better waste