by Pam Uher

Created on: September 08, 2007

The earth's largest bear may not survive the climate changes and developmental transition its' habitat is experiencing. The Arctic's legendary white polar bears are losing their habitat, as it is literally melting away beneath their giant paws. The huge chunks of floating ice, they float around on like rafts, in the cold seas as they hunt prey and find mates is rapidly disappearing.

Scientists now can state, with substantiating data from longitudinal studies, that over the past 30 years (since 1970), "more than a million square miles of sea ice - an area the size of Norway, Denmark and Sweden combined - have disappeared". The studies project at this rate of dispersion that 75 percent of the summer sea ice that polar bears depend on for survival may be gone by 2050. This would result in placing the polar bears on the brink of global extinction sometime toward the end of the 21st century.

Evidence of the live threatening impact of global warming on polar bears continues to mount as 9 studies released in the fall of 2007 directly show the correlation between changing habitat and decline in polar bear populations. According to many of the leading environmental organizations, Arctic ice melting patterns indicate the bears may become extinct in the Beaufort Sea off the Alaskan coast, one of their most significant habitats, within 50 years. Evidence including more than the norm of polar bear drownings, cannibalism, starvation, reduced cub survival and denning dislocation all explicate the urgent need to address this issue and not let it fall from the public view. Organizations such as Earthjustice -The World Wildlife Federation-Greenpeace and over 15 more conservation and environmental organizations are calling on the Bush Administration to place these magnificent bears under the Endangered Species Act protection.

It has not helped the polar bears and other species of wildlife, that the Bush Administration has allowed oil and gas exploration projects into the Beaufort Sea and other fragile eco-nature habitats in the Arctic without environmental monitoring or oversight! Accidents in this region of the world are very difficult to correct and have long-term affects on the environment for generations (remember the Valdez oil spill, we are still suffering after-effects).

Early in 2006, the IUCN-World Conservation Union, added the bears to its "Red List" of threatened wildlife. They documented that more than "25 percent of the world's polar bear populations are in decline".

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