A Polar Bear Speaks

I am Nanook. At least that's what the Eskimos call me. You probably know me better as the polar bear. I also go by the name of ice bear or sea bear.

I'm famous all over the world but especially in Canada where they even have my image on the back of their 2 dollar coin. That's probably because 60 percent of my extended polar bear family lives there. The rest of them live in Alaska, Norway, Greenland and Russia.

I earn my living in the freezing polar seas and can swim up to 60 miles at a time but recently I've had a hard time finding the ice packs I depend on to rest during those long swims. More and more of my brothers have died this way lately, hunting and foraging for food to feed their families.

Unlike you land dwellers, we polar bears are marine animals. We need the ice packs to hunt for ring seals, mate, raise our young and take a break on our forages for food. Ring seals as you may or may not know, also live on the Arctic ice and make up the bulk of our diet. There's not as many of them as there used to be so we go hungry for longer periods of time. Without them we literally starve since other food is so scare in the Arctic.

It's getting tougher and tougher these days to find ice packs. I don't know very much about science but I hear people talking about global climate change or something like that and how it's causing my Arctic home to shrink. I don't know about that, but I can tell you that my swims are longer and I'm not as heavy as I once was because of it.

Humans are always trying to take weight off but we polar bears need it to survive the freezing temperatures and cold water we live in so we need large bodies with lots of fat. When we feed ourselves, we purposely eat the blubber of the seals in order to gain lots of weight and add insulation to our bodies. A fat bear is able to survive better in our icy, watery world.

Like you, we're mammals but we differ in many ways and live in places that most people usually avoid visiting. Maybe that's why some people don't seem to care about what's happening to us. It's hard to relate to us since you might only have seen us in a zoo and not our natural home where we're renowned as kings.

We're having fewer babies too. My mate can only give birth once every three years and since I'm spending more and more time looking for a meal, we've been missing the mating season so we haven't had kids for awhile.

If you haven't guessed by now, polar bears can't really speak. But if I could I would stand up for myself in the governments and legislatures of the world and tell them what's going on in my Arctic homeland.

Bears drowning, bears being hunted for sport, infants starving, pollution of waters and the animals I feed on, polar bear cannibalism, bears so thin you can see their bones through their fur, bears forced to scavenge around human settlements for scraps of food instead of hunting on the ice packs that were so plentiful once upon a time.

All these things I didn't cause and can't control add up to a life that's full of misery and despair. It's almost not worth living unless something can be done soon to offset the damage from humans and the effects of global climate change.

What can be done about it? I don't know. I'm only a bear and have no rights in human courts. I don't read, I don't write and can't stand up for myself. I can't march in a rally or sign a petition. If I could, believe me I would.

Since I can't do any of of these things myself, would you do it for me?

Won't you at least sign a petition to let authorities like the government of Canada know that you care about me and want something done about my situation as soon as possible?

If you help me, you'll be helping lots of other Arctic animals too since they're feeling the same effects. If something isn't done now, humans will eventually also face the devastation that global climate change causes.

No one can stop climate change but something needs to be done to reduce the impact and lessen the misery it causes.