Photographer Paul Nicklen admitted that when he took these shots and made a video, he could not help but cry.
A hungry, faded polar bear wanders across a lonely Canadian desert island in search of food, stumbling on a flat surface. These pictures return a person to a terrible reality, which he himself committed.
The ice-free island has endangered the survival of polar bears by isolating them from prey that is at sea, and which ice floes usually help to get to.
The video was filmed by former biologist-turned-photographer Paul Nicklen, who works for the Sea Legacy environmental group.
Paul has seen more than 3,000 bears during his career with wildlife conservationists. But he will remember this encounter for the rest of his life.
The photographer deliberately released these shots to draw people’s attention to a global problem.
The Arctic ice continues to melt, exposing more and more territories that were originally “bread” habitats for polar bears.
Animals can no longer leave the land to forage for themselves, and are forced to roam the desert land, either leaving for the mainland or waiting for an agonizing end on the islands.
“People think we should just feed the starving bears. But the issue is much deeper. If the Earth’s atmosphere continues to warm, we will lose the polar ecosystem. We need to reduce our carbon footprint, stop deforestation and start protecting the Earth,” Nicklen urges.
