The photos are absolutely unbearable.
Heart-wrenching images of an emaciated mother bear and her two cubs in Canada are sparking concern for the furry family’s survival when winter hibernation starts next month.
Photographer Rolf Hicker posted photos of the bears on a futile search for salmon in the waters near the Knight Inlet in British Columbia, about 155 miles northwest of Vancouver. Bears have struggled to find the fish — their primary food supply — as commercial fishermen note that the area is facing the worst salmon season in five decades. The mother bear appears far more frail than ferocious, and experts monitoring the visibly thin animals say they have followed the bears’ recent decline with worry.
“They have drastically changed within a couple months. The bears are in trouble,” Mamalilkulla First Nation manager Jake Smith told CNN. On Sunday, Smith joined volunteers who hauled 500 pink salmon to the shoreline that were donated by a fishery to try to stave off starvation.
A 2019 Fisheries and Oceans Canada study pointed to accelerated climate warming — it’s reportedly rising twice as fast as the world average — as having a direct impact on the diminished salmon supply. Water pollution from salmon farming has also contributed to a decline in fish stock, researchers found.
“Marine heatwaves, warmer rivers and lakes, food web changes, increased floods and droughts and other freshwater habitat changes are all affecting salmon,” according to the study.
The situation is a sad antithesis to Fat Bear Week at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, which every fall hosts a contest — the “Olympics of obesity,” says the park — to rate the fattest furry beasts bulking up for hibernation there.
“We saw this sow with her two little ones a couple of weeks ago and then we saw her again only a few days ago,” photographer Hicker wrote on Facebook about the bear family he witnessed. “I have no idea how she would make it through the winter without salmon.” He also told CTV News that he knows of some bears that have “absolutely no chance to survive the winter — if they even make it to the winter.”
He added that with food supplies tapped, bears must look elsewhere for sustenance, a point backed up by the province’s Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. “If salmon runs in the area are lower than expected, this will have an added effect and bears may have to travel further to find food,” the organization said in a statement to CNN.
And while the photos may hurt to look at, Hicker says it’s important, as a nature documentarian, to shed light on the situation. “I sure prefer to show you beautiful nice wildlife and nature pictures but it is important and my duty as a photographer to show you this side too,” he wrote on Facebook.
In the summer and fall, Grizzlies fatten up in preparation for a months-long hibernation that typically begins in November.