Increase in Hungry Arctic Polar Bears

Western Arctic polar bears are having more and more trouble locating food in springtime due to environmental changes in that part of the world and are going hungry, a study recently carried out in Canada has intimated.

Melting Ice

The air is getting warmer and sea ice, melting sooner than it would have done, with the effect that the number of polar bears not eating enough has rapidly increased, and is now three times higher than it was in the mid-1980s.

The research, headed by the University of Alberta’s Seth Cherry, involved studying polar bears living around the Beaufort Sea area during the springs of 1985 and 1986, and again, 20 years later.

With the bears having been tranquilised, blood readings were taken, from which the scientists were able to deduce which of the polar bears were fasting. In 1985, the number of fasting bears, as a percentage, was nine-point-six but, in 2006, had reached 29.3.

Environmental Changes

The belief shared by Cherry and others is that environmental shifts are responsible for the fasting increase - university colleague Andrew Derocher stating: “it is clear that the changes in the sea ice are affecting the hunting opportunities available to the bears."

Another possible factor is that, with the melting ice, the polar bear’s prey is, in itself, becoming less numerous – the theory being that it now has fewer places to live just as the polar bears have fewer places to hunt.

"The large-scale changes to Arctic marine ecosystems that have occurred since the beginning of this study appear to be affecting the hunting success of polar bears in the Beaufort Sea", Cherry himself said.

"The nutritional stress we are currently observing could be a precursor to future population declines if sea-ice conditions remain the same or worsen."

Polar Bears in the Arctic

Polar bears live throughout the Arctic and, according to the latest-available figures, there are thought to be as many as 25,000 of them. Three years ago, the World Conservation Union redefined the polar bear as a ‘vulnerable species’.

The Beaufort Sea lies above Alaska and the Northwest Territories and to the west of the Arctic Islands, and totals around 170,000 square miles in size. Its geographic position means that, for the majority of the year, it is entirely frozen over.