Sick bear porn
Excerpted from the PolarBearScience blog by Susan Crockford, adjunct professor of zoology, University of Victoria.
We finally have this year’s example of the new fad of claiming every polar bear that died of starvation ( or on its way to starving to death) — and caught on film — is a victim of climate change: a young bear on Somerset Island near Baffin Island, Nunavut filmed in August during its last agonizing hours by members of an activist conservation organization called SeaLegacy.
“‘ I filmed with tears rolling down my cheeks’: Heartbreaking footage shows a starving polar bear on its deathbed struggling to walk on iceless land.” ( actual title of article in the London DailyMail Online, 8 December 2017).
CBC Radio ( Dec. 8, 2017) jumped on it as well, as have others.
National Geographic ran a similar story, like others, that compliantly emphasized the future man- made global warming threat the photographers were touting.
This is no different from Ian Stirling’s “bear that died of climate change” back in 2013, or several others since then ... ( one of these incidents also involved the same photographer as this incident, Paul Nicklen). I’ve called this practice of filming dead or dying bears and splashing the photos across the pages of newspapers and the internet “tragedy porn” — a kind of voyeurism that leaves people open to emotional manipulation. The internet laps it up.