Threats to Polar Bears

Polar bears are in serious danger of going extinct due to global warming. The bears were the first vertebrate species to be listed by the U.S. Endangered Species Act as threatened by extinction primarily because of global warming. This listing happened in 2008 because of the ongoing loss of critical habitat for polar bears, the arctic sea ice on which they live and depend to hunt their almost exclusive prey, seals.
Rising temperatures in the world’s oceans are causing sea ice to disappear for longer and longer periods during the late summer, leaving polar bears insufficient time to hunt. This is a worldwide problem, and the Endangered Species Act has listed polar bears as threatened everywhere in the world they occur. Polar bears can only survive in areas where the oceans freeze, allowing them to hunt seals living under, on, or in the frozen polar ice cap.