Starving polar bear filmed in last moments of life on Baffin Island

CTV National News: Heartbreaking video A startling video has been captured of a starving polar bear desperately searching for food. Vanessa Lee reports.

Devastating footage of a thin, sickly polar bear struggling to walk as it scrounges for food is a glimpse of what could happen to the species if the Earth continues to warm, according to the photographer who shot the video.

Paul Nicklen is a photojournalist known for his work with National Geographic. On Tuesday, Nicklen shared video he shot in Baffin Island of a starving bear.

The animal foams at the mouth as it buries its face into a metal barrel in search of food. In the final shot, the bear closes its eyes.

Nicklen said he fought through tears to document the moment.

“It’s a soul-crushing scene that still haunts me, but I know we need to share both the beautiful and the heartbreaking if we are going to break down the walls of apathy. This is what starvation looks like. The muscles atrophy. No energy. It’s a slow, painful death,” he wrote in an Instagram post, which has since been seen more than one million times.

“When scientists say polar bears will be extinct in the next 100 years, I think of the global population of 25,000 bears dying in this manner.”

Canada is home to an estimated 16,000 polar bears, which account for the majority of the world’s population. The polar bear -- the world’s largest land carnivore -- is listed as a species of special concern under the Species at Risk Act, and the bears’ sub-populations are closely monitored.

The federal government considers climate change the biggest long-term threat to the species.

Polar bear scientist Ian Stirling warns that the populations will continue to shrink as temperatures rise.

“There will be local extinctions,” Stirling told CTV News. “Western Hudson Bay has already lost about 20 per cent of its population, and it’s still declining.”

Nicklen said his video is hard evidence of the impacts of global warming.

“The simple truth is this -- if the Earth continues to warm, we will lose bears and entire polar ecosystems,” he said.

“But there are solutions. We must reduce our carbon footprint, eat the right food, stop cutting down our forests, and begin putting the Earth -- our home -- first.”

In a follow-up post on Friday, Nicklen underlined the importance of his work.

“The truth is hard, but photojournalism is more than pretty pictures. It can be a difficult job. Journalism exposes -- raw and without bias -- the world’s issues in the interest of transparency, honesty and, I believe, change for the better.”

With a report from CTV's Vanessa Lee