Polar Bears May Survive Ice Melt, With or Without Seals

New calculations indicate that land-based food sources like caribou, snow geese, and eggs might provide enough calories for bears to avoid starvation

As climate change accelerates ice melt in the Arctic, polar bears may find caribou and snow geese replacing seals as an important food source, shows a recent study published in the journal PLOS ONE.  The research, by Linda Gormezano and Robert Rockwell at the American Museum of Natural History, is based on new computations incorporating caloric energy from terrestrial food sources and indicates that the bears' extended stays on land may not be as grim as previously suggested.

"Polar bears are opportunists and have been documented consuming various types and combinations of land-based food since the earliest natural history records," said Rockwell, a research associate in the Museum's Department of Ornithology who has been studying the Arctic ecology of the Western Hudson Bay for nearly 50 years.  "Analysis of polar bear scats and first-hand observations have shown us that subadult polar bears, family groups, and even some adult males are already eating plants and animals during the ice-free period."

Previous studies have predicted mass polar bear starvation by 2068, when annual ice breakup is expected to separate the bears from their sea-ice hunting grounds for a consecutive 180 days each year--creating ice-free seasons that will last two months longer than those in the 1980s.  But those estimates assumed no energetic input from land food sources.

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