Filmmakers Are Devastated As They Helplessly Film A Starving Polar Bear

Aug 22, 2019 by apost team

We all hate to see animals suffering. For a group of Canadian photographers, the sight of one animal's suffering brought them to tears. When you see their horrifying and heartbreaking footage, you might be compelled to cry as well.

Paul Nicklen is a photographer who also works with the wildlife advocacy group Sea Legacy. Sea Legacy is dedicated to helping animals who might be adversely affected by shifting weather patterns and potential climate change.

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While exploring the Canadian arctic, specifically Somerset Island, Nicklen and his colleagues came across a polar bear whose appearance took their breath away. The bear was completely skin and bones as it appeared to them, a haunted look in its eyes.

The bear was struggling to walk, its emaciated body barely able to muster the strength to move. At first, the wildlife advocates almost didn't even recognize it as a polar bear. We're used to seeing polar bears as these majestic creatures who traverse snow-covered landscapes. This bear was weak and scrawny as it navigated a terrain that was typically snowy, but was now affected by abnormally high temperatures.

The bear moved towards a trash can, weakly knocking it over only to reveal its contents were empty. The bear was clearly desperate for even a morsel of food. Nicklen and his colleagues began to cry as they photographed and filmed the tragic sight in front of them, he told National Geographic. Although they were profoundly upset by what they were seeing, they knew that the rest of the world needed to see what was happening.

According to a study published in Ecological Applications and mentioned by WWF, the polar bear population in northeast Alaska and the Northwest Territories has already gone down 40 percent between 2001-2010 from 1,500 to 900 bears.

Climate change is a very hot topic. Some people don't believe it's real, while others believe it's so real that the earth is doomed to completely collapse in a decade. We think it's time that perhaps we stop politicizing the issue and instead accept that so many species of wildlife are suffering due to bizarre weather patterns. They need our help.

The fate of this bear is unknown, although it's safe to say that this formerly magnificent creature is probably no longer with us. We think that what Nicklen filmed is an absolute tragedy.

You can watch the heartbreaking footage in the video below:

If you want to make a difference, show this story to as many people as possible. Footage like this can be instrumental in getting our lawmakers to act, but only if it's spread far and wide and seen by as many people as possible.