According to a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on the 8th, between 1995 and 2015, polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway experienced a 10% decrease in genetic diversity due to inbreeding. Scientists at the Norwegian Polar Institute examined 20 years of ecological and engineering data to investigate genetic trends in the archipelago's polar bear population. The study linked this loss of genetic diversity to the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic's Barents Sea. The study attributed the reduced gene flow to habitat fragmentation caused by shrinking sea ice cover, and \"increased inbreeding among polar bears in key sampling areas.\" According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Barents Sea is experiencing the fastest ice loss in the Arctic, driven by the climate crisis. \"When a population shrinks sufficiently, you see a higher chance of close relatives mating and producing offspring. This carries the risk that recessive traits will begin to emerge within the population,\" said study author Simo Maduna of the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research. Top predators rely on ice to travel, hunt, rest, and reproduce. They mostly wander the sea ice and rarely come ashore. The climate crisis is changing polar bears' diets, potentially increasing human-bear conflicts. Another study in April also found that the climate crisis is changing polar bears' eating habits. Polar bears spend more than half their time foraging, but with fewer opportunities to hunt seals, hungry bears are forced to eat seabirds and their eggs. With declining food sources, polar bears are increasingly observed killing each other. They are also increasingly traveling away from their nursing dens, where they gestate during pregnancy. Last month, Russian Environment Minister Svetlana Radionova wrote on social media, \"The frequent appearances of polar bears in front of people are a worrying phenomenon. In one case, helicopters were even deployed to keep the bears out of reindeer habitat on the Yamal Peninsula in northwestern Siberia.\" The study stated that increased isolation between animals \"may lead to increased inbreeding in the future, with potential negative consequences such as inbreeding depression.\" However, other studies have found that such inbreeding is rare. There are approximately 25,000 polar bears on Earth, scattered across the Arctic regions of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway, and Russia. Polar bears are already listed as endangered. According to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, they are likely to become extinct by the end of the century. Source: Environmental Information Center<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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