Are Polar Bears Being Wiped Out?

By Author: Heather Protz
Total Articles: 46
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Soft, furry coats colored from white to tan. Stocky legs, partially webbed paws, and a short tail and ears. Kids may find it as a cute albeit heavy, life sized teddy bear. Its natural habitat is cold, icy abundance. Have you made a guess yet? Yep, I’m talking about the magnificent polar bear.
I saw a BBC documentary on polar bears on the Internet provided by Charter Communications. The film was about a polar bear family in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. The mother of two one-year-old cubs had broken her den a few months ago to hunt for food. The bear cubs are completely dependent on their mothers till they reach two and a half years of age. During which the mother teaches them hunting and surviving skills. Polar bears are deadly predators and possess jaw-dropping strength. An adult male can supposedly kill a weighty walrus twice his size with one power packed blow. I watched as the mother, a tad bit too lean, slogging slowly and carefully, towards a breathing hole offshore. A seal pup was dozing ignorantly right next to it. As she reaches out to strike the seal, a bigger seal pops out of the hole and drags the pup ...
... back into the water. She tries again a couple of times diving into the ice with amazing vigor but the seals manage to escape. The mom bear leaves empty stomached and her hungry cubs start feeding on her fat rich milk. The family then travels miles and miles away in the harsh weather and finally land upon food. Only, it happens to be the carcass of a beach whale, with all the protein rich meat, required for the young’uns carved out. The carcass was the remnants of another bear’s hunt. Perhaps, their father. Running out of further hunting options, the family digs into the meat and is soon joined by two Arctic foxes.
Sadly, this is a recurring scenario in the lives of polar bears. Polar bears are populated around the regions of the Arctic Circle, encompassing Greenland, Norway, Alaska and Newfoundland. The prime source of food for them is seals. Mainly, small ringed seals and larger bearded seals. Seal fat, is the highest calorie food source available. Other preys like birds, eggs and rodents excluding whales don’t provide enough fat for the sustenance of the bears. They usually feed during the winter months, about sixty miles offshore, when the waters are frozen. This enables them to dive through the ice pack and attack seals. If the hunt is good, polar bears eat only the blubber in order to build up their fat reserves. They can go on fasts for many months with these reserves being sufficient for their survival. Unfortunately, the hunt is almost never good. Global warming being the most daunting threat. The increase in the number of long summer days with less than tolerable temperature causes the water to unfreeze. The ice pack is the hunting stage for bears and as a result they go without nutritional food. A lot of helpless cubs die because of starving.
Most bears are active throughout the year. Some bears that are starved enter a walking state of hibernation, where their body metabolism slows down. Pregnant females den and emerge three months later. Denning bears cave themselves on ice drift or floes and travel about 100 miles away. But, in Russia and in the Arctic region of the US where 45% of pregnant bears drift tons of oil spills disturb their denning environment. Again, when these bears emerge, they don’t get sufficient feed. In Alaska, polar bears venture far into human habitation in search of food. Being curious, bears feed on toxic dumps and Styrofoam. Another problem they face when coming in contact with the human population is poaching. Even after the government taking many initiatives in reducing such illegal activities, hunting is becoming a close threat to the extinction of polar bears.
In 2008, scientists estimated that there might be 20,000 to 25,000 of polar bears remaining. Recent surveys say that two of the nineteen subgroups of polar bears are increasing. Even still, the fact remains that if we don’t bring the warming down, we’ll be knowingly drowning innocent lives.

Heather is a cheery, enthusiastic college student. As an education major, she likes to research about the best suited learning methods. She is interested in cooking, pottery, creative visualization, and like all other teenagers surfs the Internet provided by Charter Internet