Polar Bears in the Zoo Banned

Have you ever been to the zoo as a kid? Or brought your children there for a fun day to see all the amazing beautiful animals? One animal particularly affected by climate change is the polar bear. As the temperature rises, the polar bear population decreases. These hotter levels are taking their homes away from them. New studies have shown that there has been a dramatic drop in their population. It has fallen to at least 40% in the Southern Beaufort Sea. Due to the loss of sea ice in climate change, the polar bear subpopulation in Northeast Alaska and Canada is also falling. This can affect polar bears in many ways. They use this sea ice to capture seals. If there is no ice it makes it hard for polar bears to stay close to their natural habitats. Instead, they are forced to move into climates that they aren’t very used to. Ecological Applications studies have shown that from 2001-2010 the population of polar bears went from 1,500 to 900 bears.

If numbers like this keep happening, generations to come will not be able to see these majestic creatures. Studies from the University of Washington (funded by NASA) used satellites to see the movement of the ice what they found was that the ice melts early in the spring and would later grow more in the late fall across all 19 polar bear subpopulation. This can impact the polar bear’s in many negative ways such as feeding and breeding capabilities. “The Cryosphere” a paper published in September 14th was one of the first papers to talk about which quantify the changes which goes on in the sea ice across the Arctic region using the metrics that are relevant for polar bear biology. Co-author Harry Stern a researcher from the University of Washington Polar Science said that “This study shows some declining sea ice for all subpopulations of polar bears.” This is a crisis for their species because the analysis shows that some critical timing of ice breaking up and ice freeze up is changing in all directions and this could lead to the extinction of polar bears.

Climate change is also not only impacting polar bears but is also affecting our health and wellbeing. This could affect you by more extreme weather, fires, disease, and air quality. If things keep happening this way we may not be living here for long. Climate disruption to the agriculture has been increasing and are to be projected to be more severe over the country. In some regions there are already having water quality diminishing as we speak. There are prolonged periods of high temperature in some regions that can associate with more droughts, longer wildfires, and longer fire seasons in certain places. For these towns that to be closer to the coast would likely have more sea level rise with a combined with coastal storms. Some few other risks that can come from climate change is increased risk of erosion, heat levels rise, Extreme storms, floods, heavier downpours. Some fellow american see the beneficial things that climate change can brings us for example longer growing season for farming, no ice in the sea for less ships stuck in the great lakes.

The problem with longer growing seasons is pollination and carbon build up can intensify the growing process and allergic people in our world. Problems with ice free seas is the lake effect of snowfalls be more increased in some cases. In the Rocky mountains the Mountain pygmy possum has been forced out of hibernation and are forced to starve to death. Deer in Europe called the Roe deer are rapidly declining from peak fitness. In one study all four seasons says “the each of them will start 1.7 days faster than before since the 1950’s”. This extreme weather is affecting the way we live, animals and plants to not function the same . According to the U.S Environment Agency reports that average temperatures in the U.S have increased in the U.S have increased 0.14 degrees. In Renee Cho’s “Climate Change Poses Challenges to plants and animals” a study during 2011 showed us that species are spreading to higher elevations and also are moving more higher in latitude as well. They are said to have on average reach up to 36 feet per decade and moved approximately 10 miles in latitude.

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