Polar Bears are new Climate Refugees. Climate Refugees or Environmental Migrants are people who are forced to leave their home region due to sudden or long-term changes to their local environment which compromise their well being or secure livelihood, such changes are held to include increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise, and disruption of seasonal weather patterns such as monsoons.
The polar bear is the poster animal of climate change. While most threatened animals, such as the rhinoceros, are victims of localized threats like poaching or human encroachment, the polar bear is threatened most gravely by global emissions of greenhouse gases.
In this regard, Polar Bears International, has designated Feb. 27 as International Polar Bear Day.
It’s a tough time to be a polar bear. The Arctic predators—which depend on constantly diminishing amounts of sea ice to catch marine mammals such as seals—are declining in number, and fast.
There are fewer than 25,000 polar bears left in the wild, according to the nonprofit organization Polar Bears International. Near the southern Beaufort Sea, for instance, the population has dropped about 40 percent between 2001 to 2010, from 1,500 to 900 bears.
And as their habitat shrinks, they’ve have been acting strangely. Recently, five bears surrounded a team of scientists at a weather station in Russia, trapping the people inside.
On the same day, elsewhere in the Arctic, scientists representing Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States announced a ten-year plan to prevent polar bears from going extinct. Actions include preserving polar bear habitat and working with policymakers and the public to address climate change.
Why Polar Bears are Disappearing?
Polar bears live in the North Pole – The Arctic. The Arctic is arguably being affected by climate change twice as hard as the global average because it is warming twice as quickly.
The ice is melting and that means polar bears have to hunt, feed, sleep and breed in a much shorter period of time. They have to go without food for longer periods of time− making them lose weight – and the amount of energy they have left for survival is significantly diminished.
This all means that the polar bears – or “sea bear”, as it is translated in Latin – have to move inland for protection and food. They could wander into populated towns, which they frequently do in Canada.
However, it’s also legal to kill polar bears in Canada. If one wanders into town, they are first scared away with firecrackers. If it returns, it is shot dead.
