Won’t somebody please think of the polar bears?
In 2020, we’ve had devastating fires, a global pandemic and most recently devastating injustices on the topic of Black Lives Matter, and now it would seem that climate change is here to take us down a peg.
We spoke about climate change on this episode of It’s Been A Big Day For…
According to a new study, polar bears will be wiped out by 2100 unless more is done to tackle the issue of climate change. Also, the melting Arctic sea ice could cause starvation and reproductive failure for many polar bears as early as the year 2040.
Dr Peter Molnar of the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada claims that climate change is ultimately forcing polar bears to fast for longer amounts of time, as they have to wait for the ice to re-freeze so they can hunt seals. As a result of climate change, polar bears are forced to roam for longer distances, where they ultimately struggle to find food to feed their cubs. Subsequently, polar bears have become the “poster child of climate change”, according to the report.
“Polar bears are already sitting at the top of the world; if the ice goes, they have no place to go,” Dr Peter Molnar claims. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), polar bears are vulnerable to extension as a result of climate change. Honestly, we’re a little shaken, give us a minute to take all of this in.
Dr Steven Amstrup, a chief scientist of Polar Bears International, broke down the projected timeline for polar bears to BBC News, saying: “What we’ve shown is that, first, we’ll lose the survival of cubs, so cubs will be born but the females won’t have enough body fat to produce milk to bring them along through the ice-free season.”
“Any of us know that we can only go without food for so long,” Dr Steven Amstrup added, “that’s a biological reality for all species”.
As for what to do now, Dr Steven Amstrup says: “The trajectory we’re on now is not a good one, but if society gets its act together, we have time to save polar bears. And if we do, we will benefit the rest of life on Earth, including ourselves.”
There are approximately 25,000 of the species left in the wild today spread out across 19 different subpopulations.
What are you waiting for team? Get recycling, get smart about your waste and get sustainable, we gotta work together if we want to save this endangered species.
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