Climate change has turned polar bears into opportunists – Frustrated by that?

Guest essay by Eric Worrall

According to PHD students Henry Anderson-Elliott, an increase in photographs of polar bears scavenging in landfills or hunting terrestrial animals could be attributed to climate change.

Polar bears eat reindeer: normal behavior or a result of climate change?

December 30, 2021 10.53 pm AEDT

Henry Anderson-Elliott
PhD, University of Cambridge

Recently, scientists in Hornsund, Svalbard – an archipelago of Norway in the Arctic – witnessed a polar bear chasing reindeer into the sea before killing it, pulling it ashore and eating it. The video they captured has been widely shared on news platforms and social media. Then, two days later, they saw the same bear next to a second freshly killed reindeer.

Their observation is Detailed account first about a complete and successful polar bear hunt by a Svalbard reindeer. But they do 13 previous reports Polar bears hunted and scavenged on reindeer on the same archipelago from 1983 to 1999.

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No stalking and chasing Canadian reindeer, fishing for arctic char and catch geese and rodents grazing vegetation and patrol human landfill, polar bears can eat, have eaten, and have tried to eat many things.

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But the viability of these shore-based food sources is a long-term strategy in doubt. In their study of foraging on eider nests on Mitvik Island, Canada, researchers found polar bears to be ineffective predators of seabird eggs, so the energy that an individual bears from eggs may be less than previously thought. That’s because they can use more energy to find eggs than to eat them. Similarly, other studies have found that the consumption of terrestrial food by polar bears has not enough to make up for it to reduce the chance of hunting on ice.

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So, The increase in reports of summer scavenging, foraging and hunting is not surprising given climate change., high energy stress and as a result affect their body.

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Thus, observations like those at Hornsund reinforce the need for further research into the future of this iconic species. This single event should not be taken as definitive proof of changing diets in a warmer world, but as a reminder of the spectacular creatures we can lose. A species whose fate, even in remote parts of their arctic landscape, is bound by our own. ‘

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Read more: https://theconversation.com/polar-bears-eating-reindeer-normal-behaviour-or-result-of-climate-change-174035

Here I would have thought the Polar Bear was an opportunistic Arctic omnivore, but that is clearly not the case. We have shamefully corrupted this noble green icon with our wickedness.

Without a doubt, in the face of climate change, if a Polar Bear sees a human landfill full of stinking stale meat, it will turn its face away from the human unworthy, and move on. Continue to your traditional seal hunting grounds. Pristine polar bears would never do something as demeaning as eating our trash.

Do I need the tag/sarcasm?