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

Related Links Take Action: Ask Canada to place the polar bear on the Species at Risk list! Take Action: Protect the polar bear, help stop global warming! Meet Charles and Roger, Nature Canada's favourite polar bears

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.

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.

The Arctic sea ice is shrinking by up to five per cent every ten years – 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. Canada's scientific Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada places them in a less serious category, as a species of special concern, and they are not included on Canada's official Species at Risk list.

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

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