Polar Bears Are the New Canaries

What do polar bears and canaries have in common?

At first glance, not much. The large marine mammal and the small songbird don’t share a habitat or a similar diet, and they certainly don’t look alike.

But dig a bit deeper, as One World One Ocean did on a recent trip to Churchill, Canada this holiday season, and you’ll see that these two species are beginning to play a similar role for mankind.

Our Churchill Field Report, titled “Polar Bears are the New Canaries,” features new findings about the dangers facing polar bears, along with dramatic photographs of polar bears in the wild.

Armed with cameras, the One World One Ocean team traveled up to Churchill to try and capture the challenges facing the polar bear, and what needs to be done to help restore their Arctic habitat.

The report from Churchill begins with World Wildlife Fund’s polar bear researcher Geoff York discussing the challenges polar bears face as climates warm around the world. Ice caps—the bears’ main platforms for hunting—form later and melt earlier, dramatically shortening the bears’ feeding season by three weeks. Already bears are 15% smaller than they were 30 years ago, and the bear population around Churchill has dropped 22% since 1987. By 2050, it’s estimated that two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could disappear completely.

Polar bears are sounding the alarm that climate change is having a dramatic impact on our animal species. Geoff York and WWF’s efforts to help protect the polar bear are more important now than ever before, and One World One Ocean is proud to support this work.

Polar Bears Are the New Canaries

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