Polar bears dying from climate change-related ice melt.
A recent video recorded in Hudson Bay, Canada, showed a mother polar bear and her pair of cubs searching for food with one of the cubs observed to experience seizures and both sadly perishing within two days of the filming.

Global warming is thought to be the cause of these and other polar bear fatalities as accelerated sea ice melt diminishes both the space and time for the bears to rest and to feed themselves.

Climate change in the western Hudson Bay alone has been noted to cause melting of ice three weeks earlier than 30 years ago, while the freezing is now also delayed by several weeks.

In addition, a recent study by the World Wildlife Fund showed that for the past several years, the bears and sometimes their cubs have been forced to swim up to 650 kilometers at a time as their ice habitats disappear. The young ones are especially at risk because they are not yet able to adjust to the cold. In fact, between 1987 and 2004, the population of polar bears in the Hudson Bay area declined by 22%, with forecasts from the US government of their complete extinction by 2050 in some areas.

Kassie Siegel, director of US research group Center for Biological Diversity, said, “Global warming isn't a crisis that's decades away. It's here now. The sad truth is that polar bears are already starving as global warming melts the Arctic.”

We thank World Wildlife Fund, Center for Biological Diversity and all others for your efforts to raise awareness about the tragic predicament facing the polar bears. May we act swiftly to co-exist in harmony with nature for the safeguarding of all life on our planet.

Expressing her concern for all beings, Supreme Master Ching Hai during an October 2009 videoconference in Indonesia emphasized the need for urgent actions to reverse the consequences of climate change for all Earth's inhabitants.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/22/AR2010122206246.html
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2010/polar-bear-12-23-2010.html
http://animals.change.org/blog/view/alaskas_big_problem_with_polar_bears
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=more-polar-bear-news-than-you-can-s-2010-12-09C11.

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