Scientists “fairly stunned” to search out one polar bear inhabitants thriving: “A fats bear is a wholesome bear”

Scientists have reported some uncommon excellent news from the Arctic. Because the local weather adjustments and the ice melts, in a single area at the least, polar bears are thriving — discovering new methods to outlive, and even packing on the kilos.

“A fats bear is a wholesome bear,” Jon Aars, a senior scientist with the Norwegian Polar Institute, informed CBS Information on Thursday. 

He is been monitoring polar bears on the distant, Arctic Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard for greater than 20 years. He led a crew of researchers who meticulously tracked the burden and dimension of almost 800 bears between 1992 and 2019.

They discovered the polar giants to be in fine condition, in a position to survive and to proceed elevating new cubs.

“I used to be fairly stunned,” Aars admitted, “as a result of we now have misplaced a lot sea ice since I began.”

For years scientists have raised the alarm that shrinking sea ice cowl may put polar bears in danger, as they use the ice as a platform from which to hunt for seals. 

“A few of us would predict that they need to be in bother already,” Aars mentioned. 

However what his crew has discovered suggests the bears are adapting to smaller ice patches, and it might even be serving to them hunt extra effectively as their prey, which additionally depends on the ice, is concentrated in smaller areas.

“I feel what this reveals is that they want much less sea ice than we thought,” Aars informed CBS Information.

His crew’s analysis additionally discovered that the melting ice is pushing polar bears to get inventive on land — the place they’re more and more feasting on different prey, resembling reindeer and walruses.

“A few of them can be on land as a lot as 90% of the time now, which is quite a bit,” he mentioned.

Whereas thriving bears is undeniably excellent news, Aars burdened that extra analysis is required to grasp how polar bears in different elements of the Arctic are adapting to a warming local weather. And he cautioned that his crew’s analysis doesn’t try and predict how the animals will deal with the persevering with warming of the Arctic. 

“Bears are nonetheless in a position to deal with the state of affairs as it’s at present,” he mentioned. “The unhealthy information is that predictions [are that] we’ll lose sea ice quick in Svalbard.”

Aars and plenty of different scientists stay involved, in different phrases, that the positive aspects by the Svalbard bears can be momentary, and may very well be reversed.