Climate change leaving some polar bears starving
Creative Commons: Valerie Ucumari, 2007
Experts say the slow formation of winter ice on Hudson Bay this year has pushed some of Canada’s polar bears to the brink of starvation and forced them to scrounge for food near old garbage dumps.
The bears weren’t able to get onto the ice to hunt seals until late November this year, which observers say is becoming the norm.
David Barber, one of the world’s top Arctic researchers, said Hudson Bay polar bears have lost six weeks of hunting time on the ice due to climate change.
The bay often doesn’t freeze up until early December now and thaws earlier in the spring, he said, leaving polar bears with less time to bulk up on fatty seat meat.
“Those bears are all lining up along the coast line waiting for the ice to form,” said Barber, who holds the Canada research chair in Arctic science at the University of Manitoba.
“They’re basically all starving. They are really at their limit biologically.”
Read more: CBC.ca >>
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