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  • 2017-12-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Does a Viral Video Show a Polar Bear Starving to Death? (en)
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  • In December 2017, a viral video left millions of people saddened and horrified by the sight of an emaciated polar bear forced to scavenge in trash cans for food on Canada's Baffin Island. Photographer Paul Nicklen posted the video on Facebook, garnering almost 30,000 shares within a week, as well as the attention of the national news media. Nicklen, who is also co-founder of the environmental nonprofit group SeaLegacy, wrote: The video was subsequently shared by National Geographic, which reported: The footage is real. Nicklen says it was captured a few months before December 2017, at an abandoned Inuit camp on Baffin Island, the enormous land mass southwest of Greenland in the Canadian Arctic. There appears to be no doubt that the animal is suffering from starvation, as National Geographic wrote: However, the causes of the bear's condition were a little bit more complicated. Polar bears live only in the Arctic and eat only meat, their main source being seals. They rely on Arctic seawater to freeze into ice, where they can gain access to seals. But climate change means that these Arctic ice sheets are reducing in size, lowering the number of seals available to polar bears and ultimately, causing them to starve. The risk is higher in places like Baffin Island, where polar bears depend on seasonal ice. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the issue is likely about to become dramatically worse: However, Dr. Steven Amstrup, chief scientist for the non-profit Polar Bears International, said in a blog post that climate change may not have been the direct or sole contributing factor in this particular animal's demise: However, Amstrup points out that the continued diminishment of sea ice that is expected will make it harder for polar bears in this region to find seals to eat, and therefore make starvation much more likely for sick, lame, very young or very old animals who might otherwise have survived: Hunters from Inuit communities on Baffin Island were also skeptical over whether to link the bear's condition with climate change; Eric Ootoovak, the vice-chair of the Mittimatalik Hunters and Trappers Organization, said of the bear: Nick Arnalukjuak, who leads a similar group in the island community of Nunavut, called it part of a normal cycle for some bears to suffer injury or illness, adding: (en)
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