Polar bears are completely dependent on Arctic sea ice to survive, but 80 percent of that ice could be gone in 20 years and all of it by 2040. Polar bears are already suffering the effects: birth rates are falling, fewer cubs are surviving, and more bears are drowning. The Bush Administration's proposal to list the polar bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act is a crucial first step toward ensuring a future for these magnificent Arctic creatures. Yet the administration's proposal does not designate "critical habitat" for protection, even though melting habitat from global warming is the main threat to the polar bear's survival
How is global warming threatening the polar bear?Polar bears are exquisitely adapted for living and hunting on sea ice. They can swim steadily for many hours in near freezing water with their special adaptations of partially-webbed feet and water-repellent coats.However, global warming pollution is melting the Arctic sea ice at an alarming rate. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, sea ice is declining at a rate of more than 23,000 square miles per year (or nearly nine percent per decade!).Polar bears are literally drowning from global warming, unable to swim the increasingly longer distances between land and receding sea ice. They depend on this sea ice to hunt their primary food source--seals. With ice forming later in the fall and breaking up sooner in the spring, the time period bears can forage for food is shrinking every year.A recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center discovered a "very dramatic" change in cub survival and estimated that only about 43 percent of the polar bear cubs in Alaska' Beaufort Sea are surviving their first year as a result of shrinking ice habitat. Cub survival is down from about 65 percent survival measured in the late 1980s and early 1990s
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