Re Heubel’s Reviews > Facing the Change: Personal Encounters with Global Warming > Status Update

Dying off. That’s what’s happening. They’re dying off. Is this really happening? Their kingdom of ice, their white continent, their fortress, their palace, their worldis melting, dissolving around them, disappearing out from under them, and they are drowning in it, the solitary malesand the females with their cubs, they are all drowning in it, this desert of water whose distances now are too far for them to swim

Churchill, Manitoba, is the polar bear capital ofthe world, where the sea ice across the Hudson Bay forms the earliest each winterbecause of an unusual confluence of fresh and saline waters. In the fall, the bearswait there in increasing numbers for the ice thicken enough for them to strideoff toward the seals. Meanwhile, narrow with hunger, they nap in garages or standoutside bakeries sampling the air. Some of the w