‘Wholly Unexpected’: These Polar Bears Can Survive With Less Sea Ice

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https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/climate/climate-change-polar-bears.html

By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: Scientists have identified a distinct subpopulation of polar bears in southeastern Greenland that, in an area with little sea ice, survive by hunting from ice that breaks off glaciers. The discovery suggests a way that a small number of bears might survive as warming continues and more of the sea ice that they normally depend on disappears. But the researchers and other polar experts cautioned that grave risks to the overall polar bear population in the Arctic remain and will only be lessened by cutting greenhouse gas emissions to curb global warming. The subpopulation, believed to number several hundred animals, was identified during a multiyear study of what was thought to be a single population of bears along Greenland’s entire 1,800-mile-long east coast. ...Overall, there are an estimated 26,000 polar bears around the Arctic, in 19 officially designated subpopulations. The animals live on the seasonal sea ice, hunting their primary prey, seals, as the seals bask on the ice or come up for air through breathing holes. But the rapid warming of the Arctic linked to human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases has reduced the extent and duration of sea-ice cover.… See also article in Science Magazine. 

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