The disturbing image, captured in the Svalbard archipelago between Norway and the North Pole by nature guide and photographer Kerstin Langenberger, sparked yet more worries that polar fears face an uncertain future in a world where climate change is melting Arctic ice at an increasing pace.
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“The females, on the other hand, which den on land to give birth to their young, are often slim”.
“It may be starting, but it may just be old” he said.
Langenberger noted in a Facebook post that the bear she photographed was a “mere skeleton, hurt on her front leg, possibly by a desperate attempt to hunt a walrus while she was stuck on land”.
‘Many times I have seen horribly thin bears, and those were exclusively females – like this one here.
In the post, Langenberger lamented the plight of the polar bear and the region in general.
It was taken by photographer Kersten Langengerger and shows an unusually thin polar bear floating on ice.
Steven Amstrup, chief scientist at Polar Bears global, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying polar bears, agreed and added that seeing a skinny bear in the wild is not altogether uncommon. She also argued that the handsome fat polar bears we are accustomed with in pictures are only males who sit on the pack ice all year long. As climate change and global warming continue to progress, however, they risk losing this hunting ground of theirs.
Well, here comes my question: how can a population be stable if it consist of less and less females and cubs? This area is particularly popular with tourists who come here to see the polar bears in their natural habitat. I wouldn’t have scientific information to proof my observations, however I’ve eyes to see – and a mind to attract conclusions. Stirling said the animal weight loss could be because of the injury. On this occasion, however, we didn’t find any sea ice and we never found any bears alive. How can a population be doing good if most bear will score a body index of two to three out of five?
“In all my years of growing up in the Arctic and later, working as a biologist, I have never found a dead polar bear”, he said. Which leaves the bears in a little bit of a quandary, until they will journey northward with sea ice retreat or discover methods to hunt greater recreation than fowl eggs.
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Some researchers say that malnourished animals are a common sight in many populations. Lack of food caused by shrinking sea ice may not be the only reason for such poor sights.Rode thinks that the bear in the photo may also be injured. And it is our decision to trying to change this. Please follow me on @paulnicklen to learn more about the effects of climate change.
