The plight of the polar bear is so dire due to the shrinking of sea ice crucial to its habitat that some scientists are musing about moving them to a "last ice area" in the high Arctic.
The belief is that polar bear survival is reaching a tipping point because of the retreating sea ice. Currently, there are 150 to 160 ice-free days in the Arctic each year. Once that number reaches 170, Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta polar bear researcher, frets the bear population will decline by up to 40 per cent.