Nov 26th, 2018: Wrangel Island

[observer]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Climate change advocates have said polar bear numbers would decline... they haven't, yet. Stories like this that say they can adapt to conditions, and possibly increase in numbers, are considered unhelpful to the cause.

I hope that no one would try to extrapolate an overall increase just by the picture above.

If there are fewer places for bears to go because there is less ice, some locations will have an increase in the number of bears per square kilometre while others will have a decrease. Overall the numbers could decrease and still get local increases.