Polar bears are turning into CANNIBALS due to climate change with males preying on cubs and attacking females
A combination of climate change, fossil fuel extraction, and human intervention is forcing polar bears, the largest land carnivores, to turn to cannibalism more frequently in the Arctic, scientists have revealed.
While there have been cases of cannibalism recorded among polar bears in the past, they are being driven to it now more in desperation as melting ice and fossil fuel extraction destroy their habitat, said Ilya Mordvintsev, a polar bear expert at Moscow's Severtsov Institute of Problems of Ecology and Evolution.
"Cases of cannibalism among polar bears are a long-established fact, but we're worried that such cases used to be found rarely while now they are recorded quite often," he said, adding that the signals were coming "not just from scientists, but also from the growing contingent of employees of oil and gas companies and the Defense Ministry".
Mordvintsev explained that increased development of the Yamal Peninsula and the Gulf of Ob by oil and gas companies — both Gazprom and Novatek operate in the region — have fueled the degradation of polar bear hunting grounds and disrupted the animals’ feeding habits.
This winter, the area from the Gulf of Ob to the Barents Sea, where polar bears used to hunt, was a busy route for ships carrying liquified natural gas.
These polar bears are thus being forced away from their traditional hunting grounds and onto the shore, where they cannot hunt their usual prey, seals, and instead have to turn towards more drastic measures.
Malnourished male bears have been caught attacking smaller females and their cubs and then eating the cub, something that had caught headlines when National Geographic first posted a graphic video of the incident in 2016.
"The Gulf of Ob was always a hunting ground for the polar bear. Now it has broken ice all year round," Mordvintsev said, linking the change to active gas extraction on the huge Yamal peninsula and the launch of an Arctic LNG plant.
The rising global temperatures that have contributed to falling ice levels have played a part as well — in the last 25 or so years, ice levels in the Arctic have fallen by 40 percent. This change has pushed polar bears further south in search of food, where they are more likely to come into contact with human settlements.
The situation for polar bears is similarly grim in Canada and Greenland, where a recent study found that they were losing weight and having fewer babies because of reduced sea ice.