In this article I write about polar bear facts and global warming issues. Two thirds of the world’s 25,000 polar bears live in Canada’s north. Hunting them is illegal in some jurisdictions and permitted in others. But hunting is not the biggest threat to a species that has become a symbol for Canada’s vast frozen spaces. Global warming is.
Researchers recently reported that the rising temperatures, which are causing Arctic ice to melt at an alarming rate, mean the polar bear – a Canadian icon – could be headed for extinction within the next 100 years. The bears are dependent on the ice that covers Arctic waters. That’s where they sniff out seals, who breath through holes in the ice. Polar bears can smell seals, their main food source, from up to a kilometre away.
Exciting reading about polar bears
Now that ice appears to be disappearing, pictures from space show that roughly 10% of the permanent ice cover is melting every year, and researchers predict that the process is likely to speed up.
That’s because as sea ice melts, it no longer reflects the sun’s heat back into the atmosphere. The water absorbs the heat instead, which means more melting. The bears already appear to be feeling the heat. They have a unique ability to conserve energy for months at a time when they can’t find food. But the melting ice means those periods of starvation are lasting longer.
Ian Stirling, one of Canada’s leading polar bear researchers, estimates that the bears have become 10% cent thinner over the past two decades. They are also having fewer cubs and are increasingly drawn to human settlements looking for food.
In Churchill, Manitoba, the polar bear capital of the world, the furry yellowish-white bears are a huge tourist attraction, drawing wealthy visitors who want a close, but safe encounter with the largest land carnivores on earth. As temperatures rise, the residents of Churchill have increasingly found themselves running into bears, at the dump, on city streets, even on their front porches.
This is no laughing matter. A hungry polar bear is a dangerous polar bear. Two people in the town have been killed by the polar bears. However, one of them was harassing a bear, and the other had his pockets full of meat.
It seems that we humans, with our continuing insistence on burning fossil fuels, are far more dangerous to the bears than they are to us. For now, the polar bear is still king of the ice, but it could be one of the first species to fall victim to global warming. In 100 years, the only polar bears could be the ones in zoos.
Source: guardian.co.uk
If you are interested in polar bears I recommend you reading this amazing book 101 Facts About Polar Bears. I have read it myself and there is a lot of great cotent in it and also great deal of polar bear facts. I found this very interesting topic and I’m going to study polar bears even further. I think it’s really important to let people now about these victims of global warmig.
