polar bear

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Polar bear
A sad end for polar bears

If the pack ice disappears, polar bears will disappear. Currently, their hunting territory is melting, both starving and exhausting them.

The population of polar bears currently living in the arctic regions is approximately 25,000. In addition to the direct threats (illegal hunting and invasion of their territory by human beings) and indirect threats (environmental pollution, which weakens their immune systems), these polar bears face a more devastating danger today – global warming from greenhouse gases.
From the earliest winter days to the end of spring, polar bears roam around the pack ice in search of seals, which constitute the main part of their diet. On average, an adult eats 43 seals each year and accumulates up to 200 kilos of fat in a single season.
In a large part of the arctic regions, the pack ice melts in summer, forcing the bears to return to the shores where they fast until the next winter. However, since the end of the 1970s, an increase of 3 to 4 degrees in the winter temperatures has seen not only the total surface of the pack ice shrink but what is left tends to form later and thaw earlier. Consequently, the polar bears’ hunting season is much shorter, meaning they are unable to accumulate enough reserves to last until the next winter. And in certain cases, the bears find themselves adrift, stuck on a piece of floating ice pack. These bears are then obliged to make a considerable physical effort to reach other fragments of pack ice where they can hunt and those already weakened by a season of shorter hunting risk drowning.