Heart-Wrenching Video Shows Starving Polar Bear on Iceless Land

Conservation group Sea Legacy’s filmmakers and photographer Paul Nicklen went to Somerset Island near the Baffin Island in late summer. What they saw there broke their hearts. There was a polar bear who was about to die of starvation.

Nicklen has seen more than 3,000 bears in his life, but nothing can compare to the emotions he had felt upon seeing the dying polar bear. While they were filming they were filming they were crying.
The polar bear very slowly rummages trashcans to look for food, and when it found none, it collapsed to the ground.
There was a talk on why Nicklen did not help the polar bear. He stated that it is illegal to feed wild polar bears on Canada, and he didn’t have a tranquillizer gun or 400-pound meat to feed it anyway.

And feeding the polar bear will only prolong its agony. The best that he could do was to film the scene so lessons can learn from its death, how bears die starving and go extinct.

Polar bears are the most affected by Climate and rising seas.

 World Wildlife Fund reported in 2002 that climate change can lead to polar bear extinction.  Bears can go for months without eating while they wait for the arctic ice to go solid. However, if the wait is too long due to warm temperatures, the polar bears can starve to death.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that there is a significant decline in ice coverage for the past years and it is expected to get much worst.


As for the journal Biosciences, a current study shows that climate studies are often disregarded which made the threat to polar bear endangerment less than what it should be.