Polar Bear Population to Continue Dropping

By Gregory Mone Posted 09.10.2007 at 4:06 pm 2 Comments

Enjoy the amazing Planet Earth footage of polar bears, since the incredible animals might be even harder to find in the coming decades. The U.S. Geological Survey announced on Friday that by the year 2050, thinning sea ice in the Arctic will cut the polar population by two-thirds.

The problem is that the bears will lose 42 percent of the territory they roam in the summer, which is when they hunt and breed. Only 16,000 bears remain today, and there won't be any left in Alaska by the century's midpoint.—Gregory Mone

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2 Comments

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popsci

09/19/07 at 4:07 pm

The claim that polar bears suffer the lack of ice seems wrong in view of this article (from a native biologist (as opposed to media accounts)…Davis Strait is a very southern haunt for polar bears.

Yet “Davis Strait is crawling with polar bears,” Taylor said. “It’s not safe to camp there. They’re fat. The mothers have cubs. The cubs are in good shape.”

http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/70914_498.html

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Iraqandback03

08/14/12 at 5:06 pm

Ha! Morons that believed the rot 5 years ago. Fast forward 5 years and the population is now estimated to be between 20,000 - 25,000.

I guess that means by the 2050 we will be walking the streets next to hundreds of thousands of polar bears.

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