Polar bears

Scientists fear polar bears will be extinct in the wild within 60 years. Mark Oliver looks at the threat and finds plenty of polar bear lovers online.

1. Polar bears are the Earth's largest land predators and one of its most magnificent creatures: beautiful, adorable, and fearsome. The ice bear and giant of the arctic is known to the Inuit as Nanuk.

2. Our visual media is perforated with cute polar bears, like the cola guzzling bears in TV adverts.

3. But while we might revere them we are entirely culpable for the crisis they now face. Global warming is melting the circumpolar northern ice packs where they live.

4. There are between 22,000 to 27,000 polar bears now living in the wild (15,000 in arctic Canada) but by 2060 there will only be a handful. Shortly after that they will only exist in zoos, according to a report this week by the Worldwide Fund for Nature. If global temperatures continue to rise, the arctic wilderness itself is in peril.

5. Arctic spring now arrives three weeks earlier, leaving the bears less time to hunt for seals in ice holes, their prime source of food. The report says that ice on the arctic shelf has thinned from 4.8 metres to 2.7 metres in the past 20 years. It is feared the ice could vanish entirely from Spitzbergen, near Norway, Europe's largest polar bear breeding ground.

6. Pollutants are also affecting polar bears' health, and scientists claim the size and vitality of the animals is decreasing. Canadian scientists have observed that today's polar bears are smaller in stature, weigh less, and have fewer cubs and some have evidence of bearing excessive pollutants. Despite this, hundreds are still killed by hunters every year.

7. Roughly 500 bears are harvested each year in the Canadian arctic and different areas have quotas they are allowed to hunt. In Alaska and Greenland, about 100 polar bears are harvested every year in each. There is especial concern because Russian natives were recently given the right to hunt the bears, while the economic climate has given rise to poaching fears.

8. There are five "polar bear nations" where the ice bears are found: the US (Alaska), Canada, Russia, Denmark (Greenland), and Norway. In Norway the bears have been completely protected since 1973 and numbers have doubled to around 2,000 in recent years. There is concern as pollution levels are higher there than in the Canadian arctic, however.

9. Despite appearances to the contrary, the polar bear's fur is not white. Each hair shaft is pigment-free and transparent with a hollow core. The bears look white because the hollow core scatters and reflects visible light, just as ice and snow does.

10. They have not been known to drink cola but you can adopt one.