Climate change is the defining threat to polar bear welfare, creating cascading impacts on nutrition, reproduction, behavior, and survival as sea ice declines.
Polar bear welfare is inextricably linked to climate change, making it unique among wildlife welfare challenges in its scale and the nature of its solution. No amount of management intervention at the individual or population level can substitute for addressing the fundamental cause: greenhouse gas emissions driving Arctic warming. In the interim, welfare-focused management includes reducing direct human-bear conflict through improved community safety measures that prioritize non-lethal deterrence over lethal removal, maintaining clean carcass disposal to prevent bears from becoming food-conditioned, and minimizing unnecessary disturbance to denning bears. For captive populations, the welfare bar in most zoos falls well short of meeting polar bear needs — these animals require extensive ranges, cold water, and behavioral complexity that standard enclosures cannot provide. The welfare case for keeping polar bears in zoological settings is questionable, particularly for facilities that cannot provide naturalistic environments. The most powerful welfare intervention is political: supporting climate policy that limits warming and preserves Arctic ice.