Polar bears are among the most iconic victims of climate-driven habitat loss, with shrinking sea ice forcing behavioural changes that compromise their ability to hunt, reproduce, and maintain body condition.
Polar bear welfare is inextricably linked to climate change in a way that makes individual-level interventions largely ineffective. The hunger and physiological stress of extended summer fasting, the exhaustion of longer swims, the loss of cubs born to malnourished mothers — these are welfare harms occurring at population scale as a consequence of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. No amount of local conservation management can compensate for the loss of the sea ice ecosystem. The welfare case for climate action is written in the lived experiences of individual bears whose annual cycles of feast and fast are being disrupted beyond what evolutionary adaptation can track.