Polar bears are apex predators facing nutritional crisis as sea ice — their primary hunting platform — melts earlier and forms later each year. Individual welfare consequences are severe and measurable.
Polar bear welfare represents one of the most tangible individual-level consequences of climate change. Extended fasting periods caused by earlier sea ice melt and later freeze-up create chronic nutritional stress in individual bears. Bears that cannot hunt seals lose body mass rapidly — a bear in poor condition is simultaneously experiencing nutritional deprivation and the physiological stress of muscle catabolism. Females with cubs face the additional energetic demands of lactation on declining body reserves. Starving polar bear cubs that are weaned prematurely due to maternal nutritional failure face death from starvation or predation. The behavioural changes associated with nutritional stress — increased terrestrial foraging, human settlement attraction, and interspecific conflict — are measurable welfare indicators of a population under climate pressure.