BEARLY ENOUGH TO EAT

Scientists say polar bears are facing starvation

because melting sea ice is stopping them from
hunting.

A polar bear peeks around for food in Canada

Polar bears live in the Arctic, in the northern hemisphere, and they usually
head out onto sea ice to try to catch seals. However, as climate change
causes the world to warm up, the ice is melting away, forcing the bears to
spend more time on land.

Instead of snacking on seals, they’re sniffing around for birds’ eggs, berries
and grass to munch on. This new diet doesn’t contain the fat that seals
have, so polar bears are losing weight rapidly and are at risk of starving.

Researchers in Canada studied 20 polar bears over a three-year period in

Western Manitoba. It’s an area where the ice-free period in the summer
has increased by three weeks since 1979.

They found that the polar bears, which can weigh about 600kg, lost
around 1kg of weight each day.
Some also grew very tired searching for food. Lead scientist Dr Anthony
Pagano said: “One sub-adult female found a dead beluga whale. She took
a couple of bites from it, but she mostly used it as a buoy to rest on.”

Jon Aars, from the Norwegian Polar Institute, said the region “may be
very difficult for bears within a short time, if sea ice continues to disappear
as predicted”. NASA data says that summer Arctic sea ice is shrinking by
12.2% every ten years because of global warming.

POLLUTION PROGRESS GOING UP IN

SMOKE
Latest Government figures have shown that the
trend for wood-burning stoves in homes is
undoing all of the work that’s gone into reducing
harmful pollution from transport and other
sources.

Even well-designed modern stoves leak harmful pollutants into homes as

well as out of the chimney
Burning solid fuels such as wood or coal are really inefficient ways to heat
a home, but they’re also very unhealthy, as they release what’s known as
particulate matter (PM). This means anything in the air that isn’t a gas, and
the Government collects data on two types that are called PM2.5 and
PM10. The numbers mean particles that are less than 2.5 and 10
micrometres in diameter (a micrometre is a millionth of a metre, or a
thousandth of a millimetre).

A release of official data shows that the improvements to air quality in

recent years are being undone by people burning more wood. “Emissions
of PM2.5 and PM10 from domestic wood burning increased by 56%
between 2012 and 2022,” the report says.

Although lots of PM used to come from car exhausts, safety standards

placed on car manufacturers reduced those emissions by 93% between
1996-2022. Most PM from transport now comes from brakes, tyres and
pieces of the road wearing off.

In 2022, road transport contributed 11,600 tonnes of PM, compared to the

18,800 tonnes released from homes burning solid fuel – and 75% of that
fuel was wood. Burning wood in homes made up 22% of the total
emissions of PM2.5 in 2022 and 11% of PM10 emissions.

1. Read the newspaper report

2. Annotate when they have included:
 Heading
 Subheading
 Image
 Facts
 Quotations
 Caption
3. Summarise each article in 50 words.

Extension task:
Write down 5 interesting headlines that link to environmental problems such as recycling,
fast-fashion, waste, oil spills in the ocean, endangered species etc.