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cover and duration also affects hunting ranges. Bears that hunt over land-locked ice have ranges of 50,000 square kilometers while bears that hunt the ice of the seas have ranges of up to 250,000 square kilometers, as unbelievable as this may seem to us. This movement is primarily to keep them in touch with their main prey, seals.

This is becoming more difficult for them because man also hunts the seal. Their primary food source is reduced numerically to such an extent by human hunting that the relative abundance previously available to them is now greatly reduced. Where before a poor success rate was of no matter because there were so many to repeatedly try for, polar bears are failing to supply their needs on the same basis due to fewer opportunities.

Despite these challenges coming upon them so rapidly, it is still feasible that polar bears could manage to persevere. They are both intelligent and adaptable animals. Different genetic groups or "climes" of polar bears have behaviors suited to their particular situations. This demonstrates an adaptable and varied approach to the circumstances they face that could well stand them in good stead if these were the only problems they had to overcome.

Sadly, they have more problems to surmount. The one that may be even more significant than habitat loss, is one they have no way to avoid and no variation in natural behavior can save them from.

Since the use of poison gases in the trenches of World War I, humans have irresponsibly polluted the environment we live in with a wide range of poisons, toxins and generally dangerous pollutants. This has occurred to such an extent that genetic birth defects are found in polar bears in the Arctic, caused by the mutagenic properties of manmade organochlorines such as dioxins and PCPs (pentachlorophenols). These are accumulative poisons, the main "cleaning" organs of the body - the liver, the kidneys and the lungs - are unable to remove them to any significant extent, and so the amount found in not only the polar bear's bodies but our own as well accumulates over time.

They do pass out of mammalian bodies in sweat, this is why a poisoned person may smell of the poison they have ingested. Unfortunately, the mammary glands are a specialized form of sweat gland. They share this characteristic, and will therefore contain a percentage of accumulated poisons in the milk provided in ratio to what the mother has accumulated through her life.

With polar bears this means that each new cub through

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