The Magazine of The Sierra Club
This Year’s Polar Bear Week Matters More Than Ever
The annual event brings us cute videos and an important message
Photos by Melissa Schäfer
Kara, a 13-year-old female, was captured by scientists in Spitsbergen a few years ago and fitted with a GPS collar. After she was released, she swam for days and walked mile after mile on the ice. By December, Kara had passed six time zones and covered 2,000 miles. Eventually, her GPS stopped sending signals; scientists believe she entered a den to give birth.
Between 2004 and 2009, researchers in Canada collected sea ice satellite imagery, along with data from 68 GPS collars deployed on adult female polar bears to identify when bears swam more than 30 miles at once. During the longest recorded swim, a female swam for nine days straight and traversed 426 miles in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska—nearly freezing waters that challenge passing ships. During the swim, she lost not only 22 percent of her body weight but also her only cub.
There is no “typical” polar bear. All bears behave differently, which is perhaps the most rewarding part of our work—getting to know the personalities of the bears and how similar yet completely different they are to us humans.
The polar bear is a wanderer. In constant search for food and life, it is endlessly on the move.
Food is sparse in the Arctic, and the polar bear must act as the perfect hunter. In a world of ice and snow, there are few places to hide. Anything that sticks out can usually be seen from far away.
The polar bear has many names: the King of the Arctic, the one who walks on ice, the ever-wandering one, he who makes one frightened, the great white one. The greatest predator on Earth is powerful and beautiful yet also vulnerable.
The cubs do what small kids usually do: play, wrestle, fight, and have fun. But you can observe their mothers’ discipline. She allows them to be cubs and fool around, but when she tells them to stop, they do. Seeing how they play, rest, hunt, and show affection fills us with so much life.
People tend to think that the polar bear is the most dangerous element of the Arctic, but it’s actually nature itself—the geography and weather. You need to respect and listen to it.
The Arctic offers some extreme conditions, and its king doesn’t like bad weather. Therefore, conserving energy is just as crucial as hunting. Sometimes the polar bear can appear as lazy, but it’s very important to be smart and conserve energy while locating food. The polar bear always takes the shortest and often easiest route—like this guy, who slides down the slope on his belly. When he eventually finds his prey and gets the chance to hunt, all his energy will explode to provide enormous power and speed.
Churchill, Canada, quickly becomes the world’s polar bear capital each fall as the animals pass through en route to newly formed ice, wowing tourists in the process. On schedule with the annual migration, the conservation nonprofit Polar Bears International has planned its Polar Bear Week 2020 for this November 1 to 7. By sharing live migration feeds and online lectures, the organization encourages climate solutions to preserve the polar bear’s Arctic home.
This year’s Polar Bear Week arrives shortly after a grave finding: Unless we drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions, we could lose most of the world’s polar bears by 2100. Dwindling sea ice disrupts the creatures’ hunt for seals and therefore jeopardizes reproduction and survival rates, according to a July 2020 study published in Nature Climate Change.
For most of us living thousands of miles from the Arctic, it’s difficult to visualize these losses. To illuminate the accelerating struggle of animals that depend on now-melting ice caps, photographer-producer duo Melissa Schäfer and Fredrik Granath spent half a decade working in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago for their new book, Polar Tales: The Future of Ice, Life, and the Arctic.
While shooting Polar Tales, Schäfer and Granath say they observed firsthand the sobering impacts of rising temperatures. One spring, they encountered a thin-looking bear isolated on an island with little to eat. The surrounding ice had melted too early and already drifted around 60 miles, Schäfer says, meaning that it’d be nearly eight months before the bear could travel again for food. “We couldn’t do anything,” Schäfer says. “It just broke my heart to know that he will probably die there because there’s no ice and no food.”
This scene has become increasingly common as the polar bear’s habitat rapidly disappears. Last September, scientists announced that 2020 marked the second-lowest Arctic sea ice level on record. Significant melting began in the late 1970s—since then, the ice has decreased by 40 percent. Now, the ice that expands during the winter is thinner than in the past.
In addition to diminishing sea ice, polar bears also face a substantial threat from the oil industry. When companies send equipment to survey potential Arctic reserves, they risk crushing the polar bear dens hidden underneath. Though specialized infrared cameras are meant to protect these dens, a February 2020 study found that this method is often ineffective.
Employing the same fickle technology, the Trump administration proposes surveying Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge this December. In the country’s largest remaining wilderness area, the southern Beaufort Sea polar bears are already highly vulnerable: The population has dropped by nearly half since the 1980s. The US Geological Survey found that oil and gas drilling could disturb polar bear reproduction within the refuge, but director James Reilly refused to make the study public.
But there is some good news on the conservation front. Researchers have adapted a military radar system to detect polar bears and warn Arctic communities while they’re still distant. A joint effort by Polar Bears International and York University, the “BEARDAR” could help wildlife managers drive the creatures away from areas where humans live without killing them. It’s currently being used in Churchill, where the fall migration has already begun.
With live cameras and close-range photos of polar bears in their threatened environments, even those far removed from the Arctic can get a close-up look. This matters as we fight to protect these animals and their declining habitats, Granath says.
“Nature has become abstract for many people,” he says. “What we and all the other great nature photographers are trying to do is shorten the distance, to make people reconnect with what is important.”
