Polar bears are the world's largest terrestrial carnivores and obligate hunters of ice-associated seals. Climate-driven sea ice loss is fundamentally undermining their ability to hunt, with direct and severe welfare consequences for individual animals and their cubs.
Polar bear welfare is inseparable from climate policy: the primary driver of their welfare decline is sea ice loss driven by greenhouse gas emissions, which no local conservation action can address. Individual welfare consequences of starvation are severe: bears in poor condition experience chronic hunger, metabolic stress, reduced immune function, and increased parasite burden. Cubs born to thin mothers have poor survival prospects. Bears forced into communities face conflict, translocation stress, and sometimes lethal control. The welfare crisis is unfolding in slow motion across decades — less visible than an acute event but no less significant. The moral weight of causing widespread wildlife suffering through systemic emissions has rarely been more clearly demonstrated than in the case of polar bears.