Canadian Polar Bears Dying Out, Populations Down to 600 in Polar Bear Capital of the World

There are only about 600 polar bears left in Canada, the "Polar Bear Capital of the World," according to surveys, so the species is in danger of extinction.

According to a recent government survey of the land carnivore, polar bear deaths are still occurring in large numbers in Canada's Western Hudson Bay, which is on the southern edge of the Arctic. Particularly struggling are females and bear cubs.

In 2021, researchers estimated there were 618 bears in Western Hudson Bay, which is home to Churchill, the town dubbed "the Polar Bear Capital of the World," down from 842 in 2016, which was the previous survey year.

Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta biology professor, said that the actual decline is much greater than he anticipated. Although he wasn't involved in the study, Derocher has spent nearly four decades researching polar bears in Hudson Bay.

Canadian Polar Bears: Population Decline

According to the authors, the number of bears in the area has decreased by almost 50% since the 1980s. Their survival depends on the ice, which is vanishing.

Polar bears are dependent on arctic sea ice, or frozen ocean water, which forms again in the long winter after shrinking in the summer due to warmer temperatures. They use it for hunting, perching close to holes in the thick ice to watch seals-their preferred prey-breathing air. Sea ice is breaking up earlier during the year and taking more time to freeze in the fall as a result of the Arctic warming up due to climate change at a rate twice as quickly as the rest of the Earth.

As a result, there is less ice for polar bears to live on, hunt on, and reproduce in the Arctic.

Polar bears are important predators throughout the world. They were also the most well-known face of climate change for years before it started to affect people all over the world.

Bear Necessities

According to researchers, the number of deaths among female and young bears in Western Hudson Bay is alarming.

Stephen Atkinson, the lead author of the study published in Endangered Species Research, said that those are the bear species that environmental changes are typically predicted to have an impact on. For more than 30 years, Atkinson has researched polar bears.

Female bears struggle because they spend so much energy nursing and raising young, and young bears cannot survive for long periods without food.

Because fewer young bears in the Western Hudson Bay survive to become adults, Atkinson predicted that the ability of polar bears to reproduce will continue to diminish, Syracuse.com reports.

Polar Bear Capital of the World

For good reason, Churchill, Canada, is referred to as the "polar bear capital of the world." Churchill is the most southern and accessible location to see polar bears, and Forbes estimates that Canada is home to 60% of the species worldwide. It is one of the few places where people can see polar bears in the wild.

Churchill, a small Canadian town on the edge of the Hudson Bay with fewer than 1,000 residents, is a remote location. Churchill doesn't have any roads, so the only ways to travel there are by boat, plane, or train. Of course, Churchill's location along the polar bears' migration route is what makes it so well-known worldwide.