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Polar Bears Migrate from America to Russia as Temperatures Rise

Polar bears in Russia are “in better condition, larger, and [appear] to have higher reproductive rates than bears inhabiting the southern Beaufort sea.”

Few signs of polar bears remain in Alaska. “It wasn’t always like this,” Herman Ahsoak, an Alaskan whaling captain, told the Telegraph. Climate change and its associated rising temperatures has pushed polar bears to leave their American homes behind and move to Russia. According to Ahsoak, there were over a hundred bears in his town of Utquiagvik in the late 1990s, so many that a “dedicated patrol team” kept watch over the bears and protected the town from them. In the last 50 years, temperatures there have risen by about 4.8 degrees Celsius. The Southern Beaufort Sea, which spans the northern parts of America and Canada, saw a 40 percent drop in polar bear populations between 2001 and 2010.

Meanwhile, the population has grown significantly on Russia’s Wrangel Island in the nearby Chukchi sea. Polar bears in Russia are, according to Dr, Karyn Rode of the Alaska Science Center, “in better condition, larger, and [appear] to have higher reproductive rates than bears inhabiting the southern Beaufort sea.”