This video of a polar bear starving breaks the heart of the world

News 8 December, 2017
  • Photo Facebook, Paul Nicklen Photography

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    Friday, December 8, 2017 20:31

    UPDATE
    Friday, December 8, 2017 20:31

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    A video released Tuesday by the photographer Paul Nicklen on Facebook showing a polar bear starving and emaciated on the island of Baffin in northern Canada, has shaken thousands of internet users.

    One sees the animal moving with difficulty, visibly short of energy. The bear skeleton is in search of food, so much so that he finds the muzzle in a trash can to eat the remains left by fishermen inuit.

    “This is what it’s like climate change,” writes the magazine National Geographic, which has taken over the video on Friday. In 2002, a report by the World Wildlife Fund warned of the risks of global warming on the future of this species. Polar bears can go months without eating the been until the glaciers are solid, but their accelerated melting requires them now to go on land more quickly, and return to it later in the winter. This has the effect of lengthening the period of fasting of the animal, so that in the winter, most of them are hungry.

     

    This situation has only worsened since the publication of the report, and 15 years later, the images such as those of Paul Nicklen are there to prove it.

    “We were there to cry while filming with the tears we streaming down the cheeks”, he says in a National Geographic article.

    It is forbidden to feed the polar bears in Canada, but of course, this is not what would have prevented the photographer and his team feeding the beast if they had had the means.

    Anyway, this would only have prolonged the misery of the poor animal, which had more than a few hours to live.

    “It’s not as if I was walking with a tranquilizer or 400 tons of seal meat,” says Nicklen.