1,000 WORDS
“ Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
POLAR BEARS HAVE become the poster child for the harrowing impacts of climate change. Polar bears’ primary habitat is sea ice; they need it to hunt, breed, travel, and make their dens.
According to IUCN’ s Red List of Endangered Species, polar bears are vulnerable. It is estimated that there are only around 26,000, though accurate information on their populations is hard to gather – they live in some of the most remote, inaccessible, and fragile areas of our planet.
Polar bears feed on seals that live at the edges of the sea ice, and should get at least two-thirds of the energy they need for the whole year, in late spring and early summer.
Less sea ice means less of an opportunity to find prey. With the ice forming later and retreating earlier, this window is getting ever smaller, leaving the bears with less time to hunt.
As sea ice in the Arctic retreats year after year, the future for polar bears looks bleak.
Ole Jorgen Liodden / Nature Picture Library