The hired white bear is going to die

History of a video whose authors wanted to remind of global warming

In December 2017, videos and photographs with a dying white bear published by National Geographic and photographers Paul Nicked and Christina Mittermeyer were widespread. Many - and first of all the authors themselves - tied the death of a bear with global warming. "Medusa" talks about the work of photographers and the discussion that she called.

Paul Niklen and Kristina Mittermeyer are photographers and biologists, the founders of the Sealegacy organization, which illuminates the problems of marine ecology using photo and video projects. Sealegacy, according to the official site, unites "famous photographers, authors of films and storytellers who work on behalf of the oceans." “Working at the junction of the protection of nature and science, Sealegacy builds bridges between scientific data and human emotions,” they say about themselves in the organization.

On December 5, Niklen published a video on Instagram, on which a very thin white bear is looking for food among garbage; The video is accompanied by sad music. The photographer wrote that his colleagues in Sealegacy took off the bear through tears, and that this scene still pursues him. “When scientists talk about the extinction of white bears for a hundred years, I think about the death of a 25,000th population. <...> The truth is that if the earth continues to heat up, we will lose the bears and the entire polar ecosystem, ”he wrote.

During the week, the video watched almost one and a half million times on his Instagram, more than eight million times on the National Geographic Twitter and almost 24 million times on the Facebook of the publication.

The video was shot in August 2017 during the Sealegacy expedition to Baffinov Earth in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The first photo of the bear Paul Niklen published even then, writing that he did not come close to him so that he did not spend his last strength to avoid meeting people. As the photographer told The New York Times, due to an emotional response to the picture on Instagram, two days later they returned to this place and shot new material.

To questions about whether they could help the bear, Niklen and Mittermeyer answer negatively. “We are not traveling with tranquilizers and with hundreds of kilograms of meat of seals,” said Nicklene. In addition, feeding white bears in Canada is prohibited.

White bears eat, hunting seals from sea ice, but in this part of the Canadian Arctic archipelago there is no ice in the summer - therefore, bears live due to fat reserves accumulated in winter. With global warming, ice melts before, and there are less and less opportunities to hunt the bears.

Sealegacy employees, publishing photos and videos with an exhausted bear, as a rule, mentioned global warming. Christina Mittermeyer called him "a face of climate change." Paul Niklen wrote that he has no evidence of the connection of the hunger of the bear with a decrease in the amount of ice, but, according to him, photographs of the bear allow the “look into the future” of the Arctic. This approach caused criticism - activists were reproached for simplification and manipulation. It was noted that an attempt to find out the real cause of the death of this individual could be more of good.

What really happened to the bear is unknown. Experts agree that he had been starving for a long time, but for what reason it is impossible to say. Niklen, who took several thousand individuals during his career, claims that the bear did not look old and that there were no visible wounds on it. The organization of Polar Bears International said that old age, injury or illness could cause a bear starvation. Photographers suggest that the bear died a few days after shooting.

Victor Davydov