Climate change is fundamentally altering polar bear habitat and survival conditions. Rising temperatures directly compromise welfare through nutritional stress, longer fasting periods, and habitat loss.
Polar bear welfare is being directly compromised by climate-driven changes to their Arctic habitat. The welfare impacts are concrete and measurable: longer fasting periods cause loss of body condition and reduce reproductive success; nutritionally stressed mothers cannot provision cubs adequately, leading to cub mortality; swimming between ice platforms that are increasingly distant causes exhaustion and drowning, especially among young bears. Unlike many wildlife welfare issues, the primary driver — greenhouse gas emissions — is a human policy failure at global scale. Protecting polar bear welfare requires urgent climate action alongside local conservation measures.