due to earlier ice melts. "We're wrong if we think that climate change is something that will happen far off in the future. Polar bears are starving now and we need to act now to stop climate change," said Kevin Jardine, Greenpeace climate impacts specialist. A recent study by Canadian polar bear researchers showed that the species have less time to hunt during the season and are forced to return to land undernourished. The study reports a decline in weight of both male and female bears as well as a noticeable decline in offspring. As the Hudson Bay bears fast for six to eight months out of the year, sustaining themselves on nourishment from the hunting season, they are increasingly unable to survive the rest of the year due to limited food resources. Polar bears are not the only species currently under stress form a warming climate however.Masses of orange-and-black Monarch butterflies that travel on a 3,000-mile annual migration from the United States and Canada covered an area of 42 acres two years ago. Now, however, the butterflies that winter in the area cover a mere 13.5 acres. Monarch butterflies are very sensitive to climate change; the smallest temperature change can have drastic impacts on their populations. Monarchs have developed various adaptations in order to avoid being caught and eaten by predators. These adaptations range from their colorful wings to chemical secretions used to repel predators. Many of these adaptations are ineffective in areas outside of their native habitat however and as the species is forced to migrate to more suitable areas, they are forced to further adapt to their new surroundings. At the rate at which the climate is warming, they simply cannot make these phenotypical and morphological changes fast enough and eventually perish. Numbers of Monarch butterflies are currently declining in North America in trends that concur with what climate models predict. Agriculture and plant species will also b...
