Polar Bear Cub Starves to Death in the Arctic

This is actually one of the most heartbreaking videos I have seen. It shows a mother polar bear with two of her cubs in Wapusk National Park in northern Manitoba. The mother is malnourished and two of her cubs are starving. This video shows the final moments in a polar bear cub's life as it dies of starvation.

The mother and cubs have been driven onto dry land due to melting sea ice, but there is little food for them there, so many of them are starving. The first cub died shortly after the video was shot. The second cub died two days later. Both probably died of starvation.

In the video, the temperature is below 0 degree F. The mother bear is malnourished, with little to no fat reserves, and she is having a hard time getting comfortable. Another bear, possibly a male, approached the mother and her cubs. He may be trying to pray on the cubs! The mother chases him off, but she doesn't have much energy to do so.

Afterward, one of the cubs, shaking and cold, begins to go into convulsions, possibly from hunger. He rests for about 10 minutes, then goes into a second set of convulsions. This set of shakes lasts longer than the first one. You are basically watching this poor bear die right in front of your eyes!

This video is actually sickening!

The Western Hudson Bay population of polar bears is being forced ashore each summer due to diminishing sea ice. They are now spending up to eight months on shore, where there is little food. During this time, they are normally utilizing sea ice to access their main food, seals. This polar bear population is expected to go extinct in 25-30 years if things continue as they are.

Polar bears are completely dependent upon large expanses of sea ice to hunt, feed and survive. They use the sea ice as a platform to capture seals and other prey.

Global warming is rapidly melting their ice and lengthening the ice-free season, forcing bears to spend ever-longer periods of time on land, where there is little for them to eat. The longer bears like the ones in this video are stranded on land, the more likely they are to starve.

Polar bears were listed as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2008 due to sea-ice declines and dwindling populations. The U.S. population is projected to go extinct by 2050 if climate change is not reined in soon; the entire species may disappear by the end of the century.

The polar bears of western Hudson Bay are on the front line of global warming impacts: their population declined by 22 percent between 1987 and 2004 and may be the first driven extinct by climate change.

Black Bear Seen in Ripperdan, California

Incredibly, a California Black Bear (Ursus americanus californiensis)was spotted on the floor of the San Joaquin Valley at Ripperdan on June 23 around 7:30-9:30 PM. That's very unusual. I looked on the Internet and could not find any other reports of bears roaming around on the Valley floor.

Even historically, it was not common. Back in the old days, Black Bears tended to reside in the foothills at the lowest. Sometimes they would come down from the foothills in times of scarce food to feed on carcasses of some of the vast herds of ungulates that roamed in the Valley.

At that time, the California Grizzly Bear was the most common bear in the Valley, and it roamed all up and down this great Valley. They were also very common in the foothills. With the coming of the White man, conflicts were inevitable between settlers and Grizzlies.

They were shot all up and down California for over 100 years. By the late 1800's, they had become quite rare. The last California Grizzlies were seen and shot in the Sierra foothills around Sequoia National Park in the early 1920's.

I drove down to the Ripperdan area where the bear was sighted. There are farms - mostly vineyards and orchards - as far as the eye can see. But the San Joaquin River is only about 1-2 miles away. I drove down to the river, but it was hard to get to it due to private property signs.

At Scaggs Bridge Park, you could access the river. There was still a fair amount of water in it for this far downstream. Keep in mind that agriculture sucks so much water out of this great river that it actually goes dry at a place called Gravelly Ford.

It became clear to me that the bear had been roaming up and down the San Joaquin River, using it as a corridor to move down from the foothills into the Valley. Down near Ripperdan, it moved out of the river area and into the agricultural fields, possibly to feed on crops.

Much of the river from Friant to Fresno is now part of a great thing called the San Joaquin River Parkway, and it looks like they have preserved enough land that bears are actually using it.

A visit to the parkway site showed no records of bears using the parkway.

On the other hand though, bobcats, deer, foxes, coyotes and mountain lions do. This excellent map of the parkway shows that much of the river is now being preserved.

Even with our increasing population growth, we are setting aside so much land for preserves that to some extent animals are able to use the preserves despite the ever-expanding population. This may be why we are seeing so many large mammals making comebacks and recolonizing old territories.

There are probably about 40,000 Black bears in California, and the population has been growing lately. They are not in any kind of danger at all.

I have seen these animals up close quite a few times, and I must tell you that they are actually in general timid creatures. On rare occasions, they can become aggressive, attack or even kill. But considering the number of human-bear interactions in the US every year and the number of bear attacks, the likelihood of this occurring is vanishingly small. But I still carry a big long stick when I hike in the woods.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.

Bear Spotted in Oakhurst, California in May

My brother saw a Black bear in Oakhurst, California, on Highway 41 on Deadwood Mountain at 8 AM on Wednesday, May 7.

Photo of Deadwood Mountain in the wintertime. Snow is not that common in Oakhurst, but it snows every winter. It usually melts pretty quickly. At 2000-3000 feet in this part of California, there is just not that much snow period.

I really have no idea what a bear is doing in Oakhurst at that time of year. It doesn't make any sense. It's below their normal elevation range and it's the wrong time of year for them anyway.

I don't live in this Sierra Nevada foothills town anymore, but I did a year ago, and I lived there for 15 years.

Photo of the Oakhurst Basin, apparently taken from Deadwood Mountain. The snow-covered mountains in the background are the Sierra Nevada Range. Oakhurst is located in the foothills of the Sierras, mostly below 3,000 feet. Snow falls mostly above 3,000 feet here, and most Californians hate snow, so that's why folks tend to live below the snow line.

The town is located about 2,200 feet elevation.

A pretty cool photo of the Oakhurst Basin. The basin ranges from about 2,200-3,000 feet. That strip in the middle is something called "the town", as in, where the businesses are. The terrain here is mostly called Interior Live Oak Woodland, but at 2,850 feet where I lived for 14 years, it starts shading into Ponderosa Pine Forest.

There are about 15,000 people living in the basin, and the vast majority of them are White. Not all of California is Greater Tijuana yet. The town is very peaceful, even boring, and there is virtually zero crime.

I lived at that elevation for about a year, and then at about 2,840 feet for about 14 years. In neither location are Black bears common at all. In 15 years, I never saw one single bear in or around town, and I was out hiking around all the time.

Once, at a home I was living at, a bear raided a wooden enclosure built to enclose trash cans (it was built to keep raiding raccoons out). The bear simply destroyed the wooden enclosure the same way you and I turn a doorknob. After that, trash cans were put in the garage and the garage door was locked.

The raid occurred in the middle of the night in late August. Around this time, food starts getting scarce in the mountains due to it being late summer, and a lot of animals start moving back downslope in search of food.

Bears are pretty rare in Oakhurst. When they are seen at all, it's in late summer. At that time, they have also been known to raid homes were people are away on vacation. Nothing really stops these things from getting inside your house. Once inside, the pretty much tear the place apart looking for anything edible.

I've seen these animals in the wild, even up close, a number of times. They are absolutely gigantic.

The Black bear is a gigantic and impressive animal. A single claw (!) was used to puncture and drain and entire carton of milk. The hole left by the single claw was shocking. If you ever see a Black bear in the wild, it is bound to be an impressive experience. These animals are feared much more than is reasonable. There are 800,000 Black bears living in North America.

The number of encounters per year must be much larger than 800,000 - it should be in the millions. There is barely one fatal attack a year for millions of encounters. You're much more likely to die crashing in a car or via suicide by fork due to your diet. There has not been a fatal encounter in California in the past decade, and there are thousands of these animals in the state.

You would do better to worry about other things, as long as you must die of something. Even then, most fatal attacks occur in Canada, and Grizzly Bears are vastly overrepresented. Black bears have killed two adults in the US in the past decade, and in the past 130 years, five adults have been killed by Black bears in the US. There's hardly even anything to worry about!

I even saw a mother with cubs in Yosemite once and another time in Olympic National Park. In Olympic, we were hiking and saw some bear cubs in an apple tree. If you see cubs, Mama Bear is not far away, and sure enough, pretty soon she showed up. Just keep your distance, and there is not much to worry about.

Once when I was a teen, I was camping with my family in Glacier National Park in British Colombia. We pulled in at 9:30 PM and headed to bathroom. A bear was headed the other direction alongside in the woods. They grunt as they walk along. I noted that there was a bear heading towards the campsite, and my younger brother helpfully noted that it was not a bear but a "woodcutter".

Well, 10 minutes later, we were back at the campsite. The bear had our 40-pound ice chest and was lifting it over its head and smashing it down on the ground. Standing, the monster seemed to be over nine feet tall. It probably weighed 450 pounds. These things are gigantic animals. It looked like Godzilla. It roared and growled as it smashed the ice chest on the ground over and over.

My younger brother ran towards the bear, yelling and banging pots and pans together (this is actually recommended behavior). Everyone yelled at him to cut it out, but he was fearless. After a while, we just gave up and went away. The bear opened the chest and ate everything inside. A milk carton had a single claw mark in it and had been drained.

One time when I was a kid, my folks took a picture of me sitting on a log in Yosemite with a bear cub sitting next to me. How stupid can you get?

These things are somewhat dangerous, but I have seen them up close and personal about six times in my life and was never worried. If you are in bear country, carry a big long hiking stick with a sharp point to use against the bear if it gets aggressive.

Black bears are vastly less aggressive than Grizzly bears nevertheless.

Mostly, they tend to act bored if they see you, and just sort of saunter away. Considering the large number of bears in the US and the number of humans who must have regular closeup bear encounters (I saw bears recently in Yosemite National Park) the number of people killed by bears is quite small.

The truth is that even if you hike a lot, you hardly ever see these things. I've spent a vast amount of time hiking all over California and to a lesser extent other parts of the West, and I've only seen bears on one occasion.

I'm also cynical about bears. A lot of folks who don't have them around either think they are really cute like teddy bears or else they are terrified of them.

I just regard them as pests, and I don't really want them around. They raid trash cans, cars and vacant homes. They're destructive animals - destructive to property - and I'd just as soon not live around them.

Furthermore, it is true that they are somewhat dangerous. There have not been any fatal attacks in California recently, but there have been in other parts of the US. These things are much more dangerous to adults than mountain lions. I've lived around mountain lions my whole life, and with all my time hiking in wild areas where they exist, I've never seen a cougar yet, but I'm sure they must have seen me.

That's pretty much normal. It's quite simple to go your whole life living right in mountain lion territory without ever seeing one of these impressive animals. Unless you are jogging or mountain biking in wild areas, a mountain lion is very unlikely to attack an adult. Mostly, they attack kids, probably because a kid is the right size for prey.

When you start running or riding a mountain bike, I guess you sort of turn into a deer to a mountain lion's brain. These things are not as smart as you think they are. If you don't look like prey to them, they are very unlikely to attack you. Even if they do, you can often fend them off with that huge stick I carry. Just charge the thing as it charges you and attack it with the huge pointed stick. That'll work most of the time.

I'm really not worried about wild animals at all. I've never seen a rattlesnake either in all my time in the wilds. I saw a road-killed one once, but that doesn't count. 99% of people bitten by rattlers are trying to kill the thing. It's probably way more scared of you than you are of it.

If you live in any large US city, the human animals are way more dangerous than any four legged critters you will ever encounter in your entire life in the US wilds.

There are 800,000 Black bears living in North America. Minnesota has 30,000, North Carolina has 11,000, New Jersey has 3,500, Pennsylvania has 15,000 and even Florida has 2,400. Considering how huge their population is, attacks on humans are extremely rare.

The Black bear in California is Ursus americanus californiensis, the California black bear. It seems to be doing pretty well. Hunting season is open, and a number are taken every year, with little effect on population numbers. In this state, they are mostly confined to forested areas and high mountains.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.