Females and cubs are particularly affected by the declining polar bear population in Canada.

Polar bears in northern Canada’s western Hudson Bay are rapidly disappearing, according to a recent government study.

The researchers counted 194 bears from late August to early September 2021 when they flew over the Churchill region, a place at the gateway to the Arctic in the Canadian province of Manitoba that calls itself the “Capital of the Polar Bears”. From this count, they estimated that there were 618 polar bears in the area.

The last census from 2016 estimated that there were 842 polar bears in this region.

“Comparison with aerial survey estimates from 2011 and 2016 suggests that population abundance may be declining in western Hudson Bay,” the study concludes.

Female and young, main victims

The researchers point out that females and young animals are particularly affected by this decline.

They state that they cannot confirm with certainty the reasons for this decline. And, as possible factors, name in particular the movement of the animal to neighboring regions or even hunting.

“The observed declines are consistent with long-held predictions about the demographic impact of climate change on polar bears,” they noted.

Bears depend on the ice to feed on seals, move around, and reproduce.

But global warming in the Arctic is up to four times faster than anywhere else in the world, according to the latest studies.

The pack ice, habitat of polar bears, is gradually disappearing. Summer sea ice has shrunk by nearly 50% since the 1980s, according to the National Snow And Ice Data Center.

According to a report published in Nature Climate Change in 2020, this could mean the extinction of this emblematic animal: in the 1980s there were 1,200 individuals.