A bleak {photograph} exhibits a mom polar bear and her three cubs resting on naked floor and moss, their coats brown with mud.
The picture is on the shortlist for this yr’s Wildlife Photographer of the Yr Nuveen Folks’s Alternative Award — a contest during which members of the general public vote for his or her favourite amongst 24 pictures which have been chosen by the Pure Historical past Museum, London, and a panel of images and wildlife consultants.
The touching new {photograph} is a reminder that international warming endangers polar bears by shrinking their sea ice habitat, forcing them to search out new sources of meals elsewhere. In contrast to different bears, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) don’t hibernate. Beforehand, most polar bears spent your complete yr on the ice looking their favourite prey of ringed seals (Pusa hispida) and bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus). However with sea ice declining annually, polar bears now need to hunt down extra land-based prey, similar to reindeer.
One other picture of a polar bear can also be shortlisted for this yr’s Folks’s Alternative Award. It captures a cub throughout a looking journey on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard that led to tragedy when the child bear and its mom approached a human settlement. The mom bear was discovered lifeless shortly after, and law enforcement officials shot the cub as a result of it appeared aggressive.
Voting for the Nuveen Folks’s Alternative Award is now open on-line till March 18 for anybody to pick out the winner of the individuals’s selection award.
The successful picture and 4 runners-up shall be introduced March 25.
“Whether or not showcasing fascinating behaviour or platforming a robust story, this yr’s choice of pictures is actually distinctive, and we won’t wait to see which one shall be chosen as the general public’s favorite,” Douglas Gurr, the director of the Pure Historical past Museum, mentioned in a press release shared with Stay Science.
The successful picture shall be displayed together with 100 pictures from final yr’s Wildlife Photographer of the Yr competitors in an exhibition on the museum that is open till July 2026. Wildlife Photographer of the Yr is developed and produced by the Pure Historical past Museum.
You possibly can see the pictures that made it onto the shortlist right here.
