Global Warming and the Polar Bear

For many years, the mighty polar bear has captured the attention and hearts of the people. The largest of the world's bear species, with thick white fur and layers of fat to protect against the bitter Arctic cold, may soon be going extinct.

It is not from the hunters wanting their beautiful fur, or from a plague that has struck the wondrous creature, they are in fact, drowning.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, sea ice is declining at a rate of more than 23,000 square miles per year or almost nine percent each decade.

Living in the Arctic, the polar bears relies on the sea ice for survival. The sea ice is needed as a platform for the polar bear to hunt on, to travel, to scurry about and for making a den area for mating and giving birth.

Sadly the home of this mighty animal is literally melting away due to global warming. Without their sea ice habitat, the polar bear will not be able to survive. As the ice melts around them and their food source diminishes, the polar bear must swim further and further to find ice platforms. During these ever lengthening swims, polar bears are drowning.

With the ice forming later in the fall and breaking up sooner in the spring, the polar bear has little time to forage for food, each year. Scientists have predicted that as the sea ice moves, some bears will drift away into unsuitable habitats, and not be able to return to the main body of ice.

Lower female reproductive rates have been recorded, as well as thinner bears. Cub survival rates are down 43 percent in Alaska's Beaufort Sea and an overall 65 percent since measured in the late 1980s and 1990s.

The U.S. Geological Survey reports that by mid-century, two-thirds of the world's polar bear population could be killed off, due to thinning sea ice caused by global warming. This includes the entire population of polar bears in Alaska.