Will It Happen ?

I read this article from discover channel website. I excited, off course i was, because not only i love bear much but also there was hope for me that bear can live longer in their endangared surrounding. Here this article that i read about.

I've totally underestimated polar bears. For a couple of years now I've been saying that polar bears are doomed; that no matter what we do today, the titanic momentum of the global warming freight train is already sufficient to melt the Arctic sea ice and end the polar bear way of life. But happily, these bruins may be far more adaptable then I expected, according to a release today from the American Museum of Natural History about new research published journal Polar Biology.

Here's the gist: Earlier spring thaws in Hudson Bay are a boon to nesting snow geese, which in turn are producing loads of eggs. Polar bears are on a culinary collision course with this earlier, land-based and increasing food supply -- which is ironically triggered in part by global warming. It's sure a wild and crazy planet! Here's more from the press release:
When bears switch to the tundra in some areas, they may enter the nesting grounds of snow geese. Goose eggs and developing embryos are a highly nutritious source of food to opportunistic foragers. Although geese populations were in decline in the early 1900s, the population rebounded and expanded. There are now too many geese for the Arctic to support in the summer, mainly because their over-wintering habitat has increased to cover the northern plains, where they eat waste corn and forage in rice fields.

The bottom line is that it's about, which is controlled by climate.

Current trends indicate that the arrival of polar bears will overlap the mean hatching period in 3.6 years, and egg consumption could become a routine, reliable option. At this point, a bear would need to consume the eggs of 43 nests to replace the energy gained from the average day of hunting seals. But within a decade, because timing changes would put bears in contact with even more nests with younger embryos (younger embryos are more nutritious), a bear would only need to consume the eggs of 34 nests to get the same amount of energy....

...(Robert) Rockwell and his graduate student, Linda Gormezano, calculated that the rate of change in ice breakup is, on average, 0.72 days earlier each year, and that hatching time is also moving forward by 0.16 days each year. Current trends indicate that the arrival of polar bears will overlap the mean hatching period in 3.6 years, and egg consumption could become a routine, reliable option. At this point, a bear would need to consume the eggs of 43 nests to replace the energy gained from the average day of hunting seals.

In fact, the bears are already at the eggs...

“Over 40 years, six sub adult male bears were seen among snow goose nests, and four of them were sighted after the year 2000,” says Rockwell, a research associate in Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History and a Professor of Biology at City College at City University of New York. “I’ve seen a sub adult male eat eider duck eggs whole or press its nose against the shell, break it, and eat the contents. This is similar to a different research group’s observations of polar bears eating Barnacle Goose eggs on Svalbard, an island near Norway.”