Polar bears will go extinct by 2100 because of climate change, study says
- Studies have long shown that declining sea ice will lead to a decline in polar bears, but new research models a specific doomsday timeline
- The carnivorous bears live by hunting seals in the Arctic Ocean, but as more and more ice melts in that region, their habitat continues to shrink
The heating of the planet is pushing Earth’s polar bear population to its limit, and according to a new study, they could have fewer than 100 years left before extinction.
The carnivorous bears live by hunting seals in the Arctic Ocean, but as more and more ice melts in that region, their habitat continues to shrink. Since amounts began to be measured at the end of the 1970s, sea ice that lasts for more than a year in the Arctic has decreased at a rate of 13 per cent per decade.
“What we’ve shown is that, first, we’ll lose the survival of cubs, so cubs will be born but the females won’t have enough body fat to produce milk to bring them along through the ice-free season,” said Dr. Steven Amstrup, chief scientist of Polar Bears International, to the BBC. “Any of us know that we can only go without food for so long. That’s a biological reality for all species.”
