Polar bear population in Canada has declined sharply in five years

The number of polar bears in Canada’s western Hudson Bay has declined by 27% over the past five years. Canadian government research shows that 618 polar bears were still alive in 2021; in 2016, there were 842. Compared to the 1980s, the population has decreased by about 50%.

The western Hudson Bay polar bears are considered the most studied group. Each year, they pass through the town of Churchill, Manitoba, from where they return to the pack ice.

Climate change is causing the Arctic to warm rapidly. The sea ice, which polar bears depend on to hunt seals, is forming later each year and melting earlier and earlier. As a result, polar bears are going more and more time without food.

But according to the researchers, it is not one to one to say that the recent drop is due to climate change. Ice conditions have been good in four of the past five years. Climate change can be an indirect cause; there are fewer seals due to global warming, which polar bears hunt.

Another cause is that mostly bears and young bears do not survive. The male population has remained about the same, but they can breed less.

There are nineteen different populations of polar bears around the world, in Russia, Alaska, Norway, Greenland and Canada. Scientists expect the western Hudson Bay population to be the first to disappear.