The agony of polar bears shown in a picture – ‘Many times I have seen horribly thin bears’

[cf. Starving polar bears observed killing and eating dolphins that were forced north by global warming and Status of polar bear populations for 2014. As of the beginning of 2015, the Polar Bear Specialist Group lists the Barents Sea population as “data deficient”, so the status of this population officially is unknown. –Des] By Lorenzo Brenna
11 September 2015 (LifeGate) – The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) is the planet’s largest carnivore, it can exceed 2.5 metres in length and 800 kg of weight. The bear pictured by Kerstin Langenberger in an island of the Svalbard archipelago, Arctic Ocean, is a pale caricature of the majestic plantigrade. The picture by wildlife photographer Kerstin Langenberger shows an undernourished and exhausted animal, which unsteadily wanders on a thin layer of ice. The image, with its great expressive power, reminds us our responsibilities by documenting climate change consequences. Due to an increase in global temperature, arctic ice is melting, literally liquefying polar bears’ habitats, and forcing them to travel long distances, even swimming, in search of food. These conditions force the animals to go through longer and longer periods of fast, and many bears, exhausted by hunger and strain, don’t survive. […] German photographer Kerstin Langenberger published the image on Facebook with a sad comment:

For tourists and wildlife photographers, the main reason to come to Svalbard is to see polar bears. And yes, usually we find them: beautiful bears, photogenic bears, playful, or even at a kill. At first glance, everything is as it has always been in one of the most easily accessible polar bear populations of the world, strongly protected and doing good, so some scientists say. But are they really doing good, the bears up here? I am a critically minded person, and I observe. I see the summers being so pleasant (and warm) as never before. I see the glaciers calving, retreating dozens to hundreds of metres every year. I see the pack ice disappearing in record speed. Yes, I have seen bears in good shape – but I have also seen dead and starving polar bears. Bears walking on the shores, looking for food, bears trying to hunt reindeer, eating bird’s eggs, moss and seaweed. And I realized that the fat bears are nearly exclusively males which stay on the pack ice all year long. The females, on the other hand, which den on land to give birth to their young, are often slim. With the pack ice retreating further and further north every year, they tend to be stuck on land where there’s not much food. In the first year, they lose their first cub. In the second year, they lose their second (and last) cub. Only once I have seen a mother with a nearly independent cub. Only few times I have seen beautifully fat mothers with beautifully fat young. Many times I have seen horribly thin bears, and those were exclusively females – like this one here. A mere skeleton, hurt on her front leg, possibly by a desperate attempt to hunt a walrus while she was stuck on land. Experts claim the Svalbard population is stable, even rising [cf. Status of polar bear populations for 2014 for Barents Sea]. Well, here comes my question: how can a population be stable if it consists of less and less females and cubs? How can a population be doing good if most bear will score a body index of 2-3 out of 5? Only once I have seen a bear getting a big fat “5”, but several times I have seen dead bears and bears like this one: a mere “1” on the scale, doomed to death. I do not have scientific data to proof my observations, but I have eyes to see – and a brain to draw conclusions. Climate change is happening big deal here in the Arctic. And it is our decision to trying to change this. So: let’s do something about the biggest threat of our time. Maybe we cannot save this bear here. But every little action we do to change our ways is a step in the right direction. We just have to get started and keep on going!

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