Polar bears are increasingly experiencing nutritional stress as sea ice loss extends the period they must spend on land without access to their primary prey, ringed seals.
Nutritional stress in polar bears manifests as prolonged hunger during summer months that is intensifying with each decade of warming. Hungry bears show increased stress behaviors including longer travel distances, conflict with humans, and reduced reproductive investment. Cubs born to nutritionally stressed mothers have lower survival rates. The slow, year-by-year deterioration of conditions represents a welfare crisis that accumulates invisibly across the Arctic - bears experiencing chronic hunger in what was once an adequate habitat.