Polar Bear

Melting sea ice in Alaska.
© Kevin Schafer / WWF Cannon

The loss of sea ice habitat is the biggest threat to the survival of polar bears. Other key threats include polar bear-human conflicts, oil development and shipping.

Climate change
Polar bears spend the majority of their lives on sea ice. They depend on the ice to:

• provide a platform from which to hunt seals, whose thick layers of blubber provide energy for survival
• rest
• breed

In the southern range of polar bears, the shorter sea ice season has decreased the amount of time bears can hunt for their prey. Sea ice break-up keeps these bears on shore. This forces them to spend the summer without significant feeding, relying on their fat stores from the previous summer to survive.

Many polar bears now suffer from malnutrition and others face starvation, especially females with cubs. Polar bear populations in Canada’s Hudson Bay have declined by 22 percent since the 1990s and researchers predict up to 73 percent of pregnant females in this population could fail to bring their cubs to term, given current and anticipated sea ice conditions.

Climate change is also resulting in more habitat fragmentation. In the Arctic, most industrial development has been on relatively small pieces of land. As summer sea ice retreats, a new ocean is emerging, which allows more opportunities for industrial development at sea and on larger parcels of land.

At the same time, the retreating ice is resulting in more polar bears spending longer periods on land for denning. These factors combined are putting polar bears and industrial activities on a potential collision course.

Learn more about climate impacts to other wildlife

Polar bear-human conflicts
As climate change forces polar bears to spend longer time onshore, they come in contact more often with Arctic communities. Unfortunately, these interactions sometimes end badly for both humans and bears. 

Learn what WWF is doing to reduce these conflicts

Oil development
Offshore petroleum installations and operations in the Arctic are expected to increase in number. This would likely affect polar bears and their habitat in many ways including:

• contact with spilled oil would be fatal
• an oil spill would affect the entire food chain
• noise generated from onshore and offshore oil operations would cause disturbance

Shipping
Increased Arctic shipping represents a risk to polar bears. As traffic by barges, oil tankers and cargo ships in Arctic waters increases, so do the risk of oil spills and human disturbance to polar bears.