Are the polar bear populations decreasing?

Answer 1

Yes. The Arctic sea ice, their habitat, the only place they can hunt seals, is decreasing every year from global warming. Bears are weakened from hunger and female bears are having fewer cubs.

Answer 2

Yes, there are probably still thousands of polar bears, though their vast habitat makes them impossible to count. Their existence is threatened because the Arctic sea ice, their habitat, is shrinking every year.

Answer 3

Some polar bears seem to be dying as a result of climate change. Studies of the Hudson Bay polar bear population, one of the more easily studied populations, show that their winter sea ice is melting earlier each year. This means that bears have less time to build up reserves of fat (from eating seals) to last them through the summer. They are thus forced onto land earlier where they have to compete with other species for food in an unfamiliar habitat. Female bears are smaller and weaker than they were ten years ago and cubs are fewer.

Answer 4

No. The ice is melting and they are having a hard time finding land and food. They can swim miles, but unless they find ice to stop quit swimming they drown.

(Actually, there's really no conclusive answer to this. Polar bears have existed for over 100,000 years, during both hotter and colder periods in the past, and survived through both an Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. As for their present numbers, in some areas they have increased markedly whereas in others they are either stable or in decline. In more than a third of their habitat, there are no conclusive figures of their populations at all.)

The polar bear population is stable at around 25000 animals. The polar ice returned to normal levels last winter, and the IUCN says the bear is in no immediate danger.

(There are cites that put populations of polar bears in the 1950s and 1960s at 5000, but these are contested by environmentalists. There is also anecdotal evidence from Inuit hunters to indicate a substantial rise in polar bears regionally, but this is hardly a scientific assessment. Likewise there is not enough knowledge about the living habits of polar bears to even conclude whether higher temperatures will increase or decrease their numbers, or even have any effect on them at all.

The recent political importance attached to polar bear populations has increased considerably the research being done in this field, and along with that the money available for such research. Within the next 10-20 years we should know substantially more about their actual numbers, and to trends upwards or downwards to that figure. We still know very little now, however, and have insufficient data to come to any definitive conclusions.)

Answer 5

Their habitat, the Arctic sea ice, is shrinking every year. This makes it difficult for them to find food to last them through the longer summers.

Answer 6

No, the population is not decreasing. It is actually increasing.
Yes, they are.