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Transcript of the Video

I'm Doug Inkley, the National Wildlife Federation's senior scientist. I work for the Federation to address the issue of climate change and how it impacts wildlife that we care so much about. I'm very fortunate in that what I'm able to do is sometimes is go out into the wild and I've seen more than 40 wild polar bears. I've seen them in Hudson Bay, Canada and I've also seen them in Norway. They are a magnificent creature to see in the wild and I hope you get to do that. But today, they are facing threats and I'd like to talk to you about that.

You know, most people don't think of bears as animals that live in the ocean but the polar bear is actually a marine mammal. So what's happening with global warming is that as the sea ice is melting, the polar bear habitat is just plain disappearing.

But what's so important about the sea ice to polar bears? Polar bears feed almost entirely on seals. The seals come up out of the water into the breathing holes that are formed in the ice and it is there that the polar bears are able to capture the seals. In open water, without ice, a polar bear is not able to capture a seal. So without sea ice, there's no way to feed and then there is no polar bears.

In this video I took of the polar bears up in Churchill, Manitoba, you can see that the polar bears are up on land. That's because the ice hasn't frozen yet. Right now it's late October, early November. Basically what they're doing now and what they've done since June is they are fasting. They are waiting for that opportunity to hunt again.

The current population of polar bears is estimated by scientist to be somewhere between 20-25,000 animals. However with what's happening with the melting of their ice due to climate change, the projections suggest that two-thirds of that population could disappear by the year 2050.

As you know, polar bears are absolutely dependent upon sea ice. Every year, a lot more sea ice forms in the winter time and then some of it melts in the summmer time. At the end of the summer, the amount of summer sea ice that's left is very important. Unfortunately, what's been happening in recent years is that the summer sea ice at the end of the summer melt season has been declining dramatically. In fact in 2005, there was a record low and we busted that record by another 25% lower in the year 2007. So we've had a dramatic decline in the sea ice. In fact that decline in the sea ice this year was equivalent to the area of Texas and Alaska combined.

Scientists have spent a lot of time developing sophisticated models to track the amount of sea ice which exists in the Arctic region. Because of global warming, they've projected that perhaps the summer sea ice could decline or disappear completely by the year 2040. As a result of the huge melt that occurred in the year 2007, some scientists suggest that perhaps all of the summer sea ice could disappear as early as 2012.

Now the disappearance of its icy habitat is a huge challenge, but with Endangered Species Act protections, we can work to ensure that the other things that impact polar bears such as oil and gas development are set aside so that the polar bears have a better chance of surviving.

Global warming is melting the polar bears' habitat. The National Wildlife Federation supports listing the species as a threatened species. This way we can help ensure that for the future, our children have polar bears to see, just as I have been lucky to see them in my time here at the National Wildlife Federation.

Learn more about NWF's Expeditions program and travel to Churchill yourself!

Wildlife species are ill-prepared to meet the threat of global warming’s rapid and disruptive climate changes. Support NWF's conservation efforts by symbolically adopting a Polar Bear today.