BBC Nature Series Captures Polar Bears Trying To Cope With Thinning Arctic Ice - Telegraph

[hatrack]

EDIT

September 8 I was woken by a phone call at 2am from Adam, who could barely contain his excitement. He and his Inuit guide had spent the past two days perched at the top of a scaffold tower that they had built for safety to avoid the predatory advances of a starving male bear that has just arrived at the island. Over the next 15 hours an extraordinary drama had unfolded as the bear had repeatedly tried to divide adult walruses from their young. Adam talked me through the shots, which sounded spectacular – his main concern being how we would end the sequence given that the walruses had all escaped. The bear was now looking a little sorry for itself having been stabbed in the leg by a walrus tusk. I decided to delay Adam's airlift so we could see how the situation would play itself out.

September 10 The stab wounds had been more severe than Adam realised, and the bear was dying. Adam filmed its final moments and was now keen to get away. I don't blame him – it must have been upsetting to watch such a magnificent creature starving to death. We managed to get Adam airlifted out, and although this had not been the ending to the summer polar bear sequence we had expected, it was certainly a poignant reminder that polar bears are now being forced to take on more dangerous prey (their normal diet is seals) as the Arctic ice cap melts earlier each year.

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July 22 After a few hours of flying around and searching for bears, Jason spotted our male – the star of the shoot in April. He was out on the melting sea ice not far from where we filmed him before. We dropped down and hovered, but maintained a distance of almost a mile. I was anxious not to get any closer in case we disturbed him, so Richard was forced to use the full extent of his zoom. The image on my monitor was desperately moving – the bear was struggling to cross a stretch of thinning ice without crashing through it. He contorted his body in an attempt to spread his weight, but eventually the ice gave way and his paws went crashing through.

It was a heartrending image. I couldn't help wondering if this was a glimpse of the unstable future that these creatures face as the Arctic ice cap shrinks. These images combined with the summer footage of the bear attacking a walrus as a last resort after his normal icy hunting ground had melted painted a picture of a species in trouble. Richard commented on how filming this would make going back to filming car chases in Hollywood seem trivial.

EDIT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/12/23/smpolar23.xml&page=3

[msongs]

1. bears decline, seals benefit, and the balance is tipped nt