Polar bears in Russia are adapting their behavior to overcome the "catastrophic effects" of global warming, but new migration routes are pushing them dangerously close to humans, a leading researcher said.
The polar bear population that stretches from eastern Russia to the U.S. state of Alaska has fallen from an estimated 4,000 to about 1,500 as ice fields have melted in the past 20 years, said Nikita Ovsyanikov, the top polar bear expert at the Academy of Sciences.
But growing temperatures have also opened up some new feeding grounds by allowing the bears to break through the ice, he said, forcing the great white carnivores closer to human settlements where they are often killed by nervous residents and poachers.