Melting ice increases bear risk

THE higher global temperatures go, the more likely polar bears are to interact with humans and eat them, scientists warn.

For hungry bears, ice floating on the sea is a perfect hunting ground.

They stake out breaks in the ice that calorie-dense seals use as breathing holes. The bears wait for the marine mammals to surface or use the icy cover to creep up on sunning seals, then pounce.

But warmer temperatures mean less ice, which tilts the Darwinian game of hide-andseek in the seals’ favour.

“But a bear’s still got to eat,” said Geoff York, with Polar Bears International, who is one of the study’s authors and has survived three encounters with aggressive polar bears.

The researchers analysed decades of polar bear attacks, dating from the 1870s. They included one particularly gruesome story of a polar bear chomping on 16th century Russian explorers, but the data gathered from media reports, law enforcement and government records became more consistent in the 1960s.

They found that “the greatest

Most bear landscape

number of polar bear attacks occurred in the partial decade of 2010-2014, which was characterised by historically low summer sea ice extent and long icefree periods”, according to the study. Fifteen attacks happened in that period.

Most attacks took place in field camps and with people travelling across the landscape. About 27% happened in towns.

The researchers’ findings match what others have found about how polar bears adapt to changing conditions.

The US Geological Survey concluded that declining sea ice means polar bears have to walk more and burn more calories to stay within their preferred habitat, according to the Associated Press.

Less sea ice, for polar bears, means more time on land, concluded the book Meltdown: Terror at the Top of the World, about a polar bear attack. Those changes have altered how the bears forage for food, a Yale study concluded.

The bears on land are also more likely to interact with humans, Meltdown says: “After all, to a starving bear, a human is just meat.”

Human activity in Arctic areas has also increased as people and businesses have taken advantage of decreasing sea ice, York said. That further increases the chance of bears coming into contact with miners, fishermen and tourists.

At the same time, the researchers said, hungrier bears are taking more risks. Polar bears tend to be riskaverse, and there’s an evolutionary reason for that.

An injured brown or black bear bear can still forage for forest foods to sustain it. – Washington Post