report website screenshot
Recently, multiple studies have warned that global warming caused by human activities is accelerating the extinction of polar organisms, posing a huge threat to polar biodiversity.
According to Associated Press 23 report, researchers found that in the Canadian town of Churchill in West Hudson Bay, known as the "Polar Bear Capital", the number of polar bears dropped from 842 at the time of the 2016 survey to 618. Since the 1980s, polar bear populations in the region have declined by nearly 50%.
Report website screenshot
The article points out that due to climate change, the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. The sea ice on which polar bears live, hunt and breed is opening earlier this year and taking longer to freeze in the fall.
Stephen Atkinson, the lead author of the study, analyzed that the concentrated death of male and female bears and cubs is worrying, and the reproductive capacity of local polar bears will be weakened.
On the other side of the world, in the Antarctic continent, sea ice is also sinking at an accelerated rate. Several species of seabirds, including emperor penguins and Adélie penguins , will have difficulty completing their breeding cycles and face the risk of extinction.
CNN 22 cited a study saying that if global fossil fuel use is not controlled, 65% of Antarctica’s native species may disappear by the end of this century.
Multiple studies have pointed out that increasing human activities in the Antarctic region are also intensifying snowmelt. In addition to the expanding scope of scientific expeditions, visitor numbers have surged more than eightfold since the 1990s.
Source: China News Network
