Polar bears are among the most iconic climate change victims. Understanding the welfare implications of their changing environment reveals how climate disrupts the lives of individual wild animals.
The welfare of individual polar bears is deteriorating in real time as climate change reduces access to the sea ice hunting platforms they evolved to depend on. A polar bear that would historically have hunted seals through spring and fall ice seasons now faces extended fasting periods on land, with pregnant females needing to sustain themselves and their cubs through increasingly long ice-free periods on depleted fat reserves. Cubs born to nutritionally stressed mothers have lower birth weights and survival rates. The stress of human-wildlife conflict during land-based periods adds to chronic nutritional stress. Every individual polar bear's welfare is becoming progressively worse in measurable, documentable ways that map directly onto climate metrics.