Polar Bears and Global Warming, Climate Change

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Northern Icon in Peril: Global Warming Threatens the World’s Polar Bears

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Polar bears are the world’s largest land predators, and the most majestic creature of the Far North. But dramatic changes, caused by global warming, are taking place in the Arctic that threaten the survival of this spectacular species.

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Global warming is melting the polar ice caps, robbing the bears of the ice floes they need to hunt prey. As the annual sea ice melts, polar bears are forced ashore to spend their summers fasting.

If the Arctic ice cap continues to melt sooner and form later, polar bears will become too thin to reproduce and they will become extinct by the end of this century.(1)

The polar bear’s home – the Arctic – is experiencing the effects of global warming more than any other place. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at almost twice the rate of that of the rest of the world, and it is threatening to place the entire Arctic ecosystem in jeopardy.

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Since 1979 the extent of summer ice has declined by about 30 percent (2) – sea ice that not only provides hunting ground for polar bears, but shelter and transportation for seals, walrus, arctic foxes, and the Inuit people. The underside provides a surface for algae that supports cod, char, beluga, and narwhal. The white sea ice also has a cooling effect on climate by reflecting light away from Earth’s surface. As it melts, global warming advances even more quickly.

The United States designated the polar bear as threatened in May 2008. Since 1991, Canada's scientific Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada has placed them in a less serious category, as a species of special concern.

In November 2011, thanks in part to over 63,000 letters sent by Nature Canada supporters demanding the polar bear be protected, the federal government listed the polar bear as a species of special concern under the Species at Risk Act.

Regardless of its current official status, the polar bear’s habitat is under assault from the effects of our climate crisis, which, if not reversed, will mean the end of this iconic species within our lifetime.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature added the polar bear to its "Red List" of the world's most imperiled wildlife in 2006. In 2009, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) cited climate change as the greatest challenge to the conservation of polar bears, and concluded that 1 of 19 subpopulations is currently increasing, 3 are stable and 8 are declining. For the remaining 7 subpopulations available data were insufficient to provide an assessment of current trend.

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have steadily risen since the country signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. These increases, and the global warming they cause, are a greater threat to polar bears than any other threat they face.

You can help save the polar bear! Go to charlesandroger.ca and sign our petition – speak up about global warming!

About the Polar Bear

Common Name: Polar Bear
Latin Name: Ursus Maritimus
Status: Special Concern (according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada)
Size: Males are typically between two and three metres long and weigh up to 500 kg, though a few weigh as much as 800 kg. Females weigh between 150 to 250 kg.
Population: 22,000 to 27,000
Life Span: 20 to 25 years
Range: Most polar bears live in Canada, but other populations exist in Alaska, Russia, Greenland and Norway.
Threats: climate change, air pollution, oil spills, toxic chemicals

Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are necessary for life on this planet. But in the last 200 years, human activity has released more CO2 than our planet can handle – too many gases are remaining trapped inside our atmosphere, more than at any time in the last 800,000 years. These gases, which also include methane and nitrous oxide, are causing our planet to warm up – and the results of this global warming of our planet are becoming more dramatic every day.

(1) Sources: 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, the product of four years of work by more than 300 scientists and from 2009 Climate Change and Species report commissioned by WWF.

(2) Source: National Geographic, July 2011

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