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well to the water, not to mention the fact that they can swim for miles. However, the farther out ice gets from shore due to global warming, the more vulnerable they become. For one thing, a longer swim certainly costs more energy. They also become very susceptible to rough seas and high tidal winds. This puts them at risk of drowning.

A report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which draws on the work of 2,500 researchers from more than 130 nations and is one of the most comprehensive reports on global warming. In this report, human activity is sited as bearing very high likelihood for causing global warming. This report also dispels the assumption by some scientist, that special conservation areas can abate the threat of extinction of the Polar bears. The reason given is that sea levels will continue to rise for the over a thousand years, even if the emission of greenhouse gases is curtailed.

Global warming is definitely bad news to these magnificent creatures. It is killing them off gradually. Policies on oil and gas development in the Arctic region are accelerating global warming which in turn is speedily increasing the melting of the sea ice and hence, the Polar bears' home. The result of this is the death and gradual extinction of this specie of creatures.

Environmental-friend ly groups are putting pressure on governments while at the same time, educating individuals on the need for us to be eco-friendly. In Alaska alone, it has increasingly become warm over the past half-century. This has been linked to heightened river erosions and streams, insect infestations and the undermining of pipelines and roads as the permafrost thaws. The Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, a consortium of the state's tribes, earlier this month passed a resolution urging that the U.S. government enact a mandatory program to reduce global warming. This is just one out of the many incentives which environment-friendly grops and bodies are taking in order to save the Polar bears.

On February 16, 2005 the same day the Kyoto Protocol entered into force without the participation of the United States the Center for Biological Diversity filed a scientific petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. This shows the enormity of the situation and the catastrophic nature of the environmental change in the Arctic and its effect on Polar bears. We really need to act fast. Of all the mammalia in the animal kingdom, the polar bears top the list of those facing extinction and might I add, eviction from this planet.

References:

Centre for Biological Diversity
http://www.biological diversity.org/

Is Global Warming Killing the Polar Bears?
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL December 14, 2005

http://www.wwf.org.uk/

Learn more about this author, Stephanie Andrews.
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