Sea ice in Canada's Hudson Bay has been late to form, raising fears over the impact on polar bears.
The environment 6 December 2021.
By Adam Vaughan
There is a lone polar bear.
Cindy Hopkins is from Alamy.
The lack of sea ice in Canada this winter should serve as a wake-up call for the risk of climate change to polar bears.
The Hudson Bay area has remained almost entirely ice-free in the face of high temperatures, despite the fact that ice normally starts building up in November. In the north-western part of the bay, only 13 percent of the area is covered in ice. 70% of the bay is covered in ice by this time in the year.
The polar bears are waiting for the ice to form so they can hunt seals. The US Snow and Ice Data Centre says that the bay will eventually freeze this winter. The agency says the current low is extreme and across the bay as a whole, second only to 2010 for this time of year.
It is very unusual. Brandon Laforest at WWF Canada says it is very low. I don't think this is panic and everything is collapsing, but it is indicative of the broader trend of sea ice loss.
Climate change has led to a decline in sea ice.
Peter Convey, an ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey, says that it is not good for the bears. They get a gradual loss in condition if they don't have sea ice. A lot will survive this year. The balance is tipped towards stress-related mortality. Fewer will survive.
Climate change is predicted to push almost all the world's remaining polar bears to the edge of their fast limits by the end of the century. The canaries in the coal mine are doing worse than the bears in the highArctic, according to Laforest.
He says that they are the first to look at the broad implications of climate change. We need to take the warning signals seriously. It is a wake-up call.
It will be difficult to measure the impact this year's late freeze has on the bears because of the remote nature of the region in which they hunt. There may be more human-wildlife conflict as hungry bears wander into Inuit communities in search of food. The late ice is affecting people in the region, as they can't access their usual hunting grounds.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the sea ice extent in November was the tenth lowest on record. The growth of sea ice in the Russian side of theArctic has been above average, trapping ships in ice and disrupting supplies to the cities.
There are more on these topics.
Climate change.
The bears are called polar bears.
