The Arctic is warming so fast that by 2050 it may be largely ice free in summer . Without their frozen hunting platform , how will the polar bears survive ?
A female polar bear nurses cubs on late July ice off Svalbard , Ashere . Fat reserves from hunting ringed and bearded seals , and sometimes walruses , must carry bears through lean summers.
Impervious to a dive-bombing arcitic tern , a hungry bear on the shore of Hustom Bay uses up energy prowing for tern eggs . Summers dry-dock bears around the bay , where biologist Ian Stiring has linked shrinking sea ice to skinnier bears and smaller litters.
Bears at sea , the minimum extent of sea ice in summer has declined by about 30 percent since regular satellite monitoring began in 1979; even in winter the ice doesent fully recover . In some areas females returning to denning sites in autumn face daunting expanses of open water . The Canadian high Artic and northern Greenland could be the best refuges for polar bears , and even in those areas the ice will disappear if greenhouse gases aren't curbed.
Polar bears are strong swimmers , but swimming long distances in open water is draining and can be fatal . In 2008 a radio collared bear with a yearling cub swam an astounding 427 miles to reach the ice off the northern Alaska coast , The cubs didn't make it . females face especially hard times . Malnourished males may kill and eat the cubs ... and their mothers ... behavior scientists believe may become common as food diminishes .
Male polar bears may eat young bears (above) , so mothers are ever vigilant Photographer Florian Schutz watched a Svalbard male eat a baby cub.
from childhood we create a picture of our physical world : The shy is blue , the Arctic is white . But before this century ends ... and perhaps much sooner ... most of the arctic is perdicted to be b lue water every summer . Can a Arctic support polar bears ? Only in the short run .
Currents still cram drifting sea ice against the Canadian Acrtic Islands and northern Greenland in summer , creating pockets that may retain enough ice to support polar bears through this century . If we can reduce the warming of the atmosphere . It will not be too late for polar bears , but "if the world keeps warming , ultimately even those last refuges will fail to sustain the icon of the Arctic .
Write letters to your government from the atae and national level , Your voice will count . You can also get information from the sites listed below. The more informed you are about Climate Change /Global Warming the more you will understand how drastic the situation is.
