Polar bears are eating rubbish thanks to climate-change hunger

Hungry polar bears are turning to rubbish dumps to fill their stomachs as their icy habitat disappears.

A team of Canadian and US scientists warned on Wednesday that refuse is an emerging threat to already-vulnerable polar bear populations as the animals become more reliant on landfills near northern communities. This leads to  conflict with people, said the report in the journal Oryx.

“Bears and garbage are a bad association,” said co-author Andrew Derocher, a  University of Alberta biologist. “We know that very well from a brown bear and black bear perspective, and now it’s an issue developing with polar bears.”

Polar bears rely on sea ice to hunt seals. But with the Arctic warming four times faster than the rest of the world, sea ice melts earlier in summer and freezes up later in autumn. This forces bears to spend more time ashore, away from their natural prey.

To fatten up, the report said, polar bears now flock to open dumps in the Arctic and sub-Arctic such as Russia’s Belushya Guba and whale bone piles left over from Inuit hunts near Kaktovik in Alaska.

Such behaviour is risky. Local wildlife managers may kill bears out of concern for public safety. And consuming garbage can make bears sick.

Wrappers are often frozen into food scraps so polar bears end up eating plastic and other nonedible things. This can cause fatal digestive blockages.

“Bears don’t know all the negatives that come with plastic ingestion and the diseases and toxins they’re likely exposed to in a (landfill) setting,” said co-author Geoff York, senior director of conservation at Polar Bears International, an advocacy group.

The scientists said the situation is likely to get worse. Human populations are rising in the Arctic. Nunavut in Canada, where thousands of polar bears live, is projected to grow nearly 40% by 2043.

Improving waste management is a challenge for remote communities. The ground is often frozen, making it hard to bury rubbish. And trucking it out is expensive. Federal funding is needed to fix the problem, said the scientists.

“Already we’ve had a couple of human fatalities in the eastern Canadian Arctic,” said Derocher. “It’s surprising just how many places that never had polar bear problems are now having emerging issues.”

Reuters