Polar bear cubs playing with their mother. Location: Wapusk National Park, Canada 🇨🇦

Video by daisygilardini Photo by
@daisygilardini | Mother’s patience!
Polar bears’ reproductive rate is among the lowest of all mammals. Females reach maturity at the age of four- to five-years-old and usually give birth to two cubs.
Mortality is high during the cubs’ first year of life, and depends largely on the mother’s health. Cubs will stay with their mother for two and a half to three years.
Bears can live anywhere from 20 to 30 years. That means a typical female will have five or six litters during her lifetime, of which two in three cubs will die within their first two years.
With such a slow-to-reproduce animal, bad polar bear management could have dramatic consequences on their numbers.
Mother bears and their cubs generally emerge from their dens in March or April, when the cubs are strong enough to survive outdoors and are ready to make the trek to the ice. This period also coincides with the seals’ birthing season on the pack ice — easy meals for the mother bears who have been fasting for as long as eight months at this point.

#polarbear #conservation #arctic #climatechange #motherhood


Location: Wapusk National Park, Canada 🇨🇦