Ice Bear : A Natural And Unnatural History Of The Polar Bear

Local Description

Hutchinson, 2011. First edition, first printing. A fine, unmarked copy that presents as brand new.

Description

Polar bears are creatures of paradox. They are white bears whose skin is black, massive predators that can walk almost silently, Arctic residents whose major problem is not staying warm, but keeping cool. Fully grown they can measure ten feet in length and close to 2,000 pounds, but at birth they weigh just twenty ounces. Creatures that may wander thousands of miles over the course of a year, they begin life in a snowdrift. The world’s largest land carnivores, they are officially classified as marine mammals. But they are, above all, incontrovertibly, creatures of the ice. Without sea ice and the life it supports, polar bears cannot survive. According to scientific predictions, if warming continues at its present pace, summer sea ice could disappear entirely from the Arctic Ocean by the year 2040. If that happens, the polar bear - one of the most recognisable animals on the planet - could be extinct within a generation. Ice Bear is the definitive account of an iconic species: its life, its past, and its future. It blends natural and human history, myth and reality with scientific and personal observation, to tell the story of these remarkable animals, the region in which they dwell, and the rapid changes overtaking planet Earth.

Author description

Kieran Mulvaney is the author of At the Ends of the Earth: A History of the Polar Regions and The Whaling Season: An Inside Account of the Struggle To Stop Commercial Whaling. He has travelled extensively in the Arctic and Antarctic, and has written for such outlets as New Scientist, BBC Wildlife, the Washington Post Magazine and the Guardian. He blogs regularly at the 'Earth Pub', Discovery Channel’s Global Science Blog, and is a correspondent for Reuters.