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There are few truly wild places left
and none so majestic as this.
In winter, endless darkness is brightened
by the frisky dance of the northern lights.
And 30 below is the norm.
It's lovely weather for polar bear families.
One hundred and fifty thousand years ago
some brown bears moved north and gradually adapted.
Over time, their fur turned white
for camouflage.
Their snouts got longer
and their noses keener
to detect even the slightest whiff of dinner.
This is a cold, stark world
but to polar bear mothers and cubs
it's paradise.
Because they're built for the Arctic
polar bears cannot thrive anywhere else.
They're at home here and only here.
Polar bears have always hunted
from floating platforms of sea ice.
Feasting on rich seal meat
has made these the largest bears in the world.
But now the Arctic is warming
and the sea ice is melting away.
making it harder than ever to catch seals.
This warming
has left the polar bears on thin ice.
The less ice there is to reflect the sun's rays
the faster the ocean warms.
That's why the Arctic is warming twice as fast as any other region.
In 1980
the summer sea ice covered 25 percent more ocean
than it does now.
If the current trend continues
the Arctic Ocean could be free of sea ice each summer
by the year 2050.
Even if we can't stop this loss, we can slow it down.
Just as we release the greenhouse gases that are warming the region
we can help reduce them.
Ocean currents flow from the Arctic
and cool the entire planet.
So we're all closely connected to the top of the world.
Most Arctic glaciers are melting faster than ever before.
Ironically, the faster these glaciers melt
the more majestic their waterfalls.
The distance between ice packs is growing.
Nowadays, a polar bear in search of sea ice often has further to go.
It can be a swim to nowhere.
When they can't find seals to eat
mothers make do with meager scraps.
One mother and her cub set out on the longest swim ever tracked.
The mother swam continuously for nine days
covering 430 miles.
But her cub did not survive.
Some cubs do survive
especially if the mother is a clever scavenger.
Like polar bears
birds are struggling as the Arctic warms.
Arctic birds time their lives to the seasons.
So do the Inuit people
like Simon Qamanirq.
Polar bears surprise us in camp.
Especially in the lean summer months.
My father could read the clouds.
He knew when the storm was coming.
But now the ancient weather patterns have changed.
Our grandfathers fed their families well.
My family has always depended on snow and ice.
Nowadays when the ice melts, we can adjust
but the polar bears are not so lucky.
The ice is forming later in the year
so it's thinner.
Sometimes we fall through.
My friend Adam Ravetch has been coming up here for 20 years
to photograph the animals.
I love it when a mom dances with her 2-year-old cub
cheek to cheek.
Polar bears are great swimmers
even though they only use
their gigantic front paws.
These dedicated mothers put over two years
into raising their young.
Walrus moms spend even longer.
Walrus love clams.
They dive down from rafts of ice
which drift along and carry them to fresh supplies
of their favorite treat.
As sea ice melts
walrus are stuck on land
so mothers must swim farther to find food for their young.
Mothers teach their young survival skills
such as scaring off intruders.
One mom sent me a very clear message:
"Get lost."
Summer in the Arctic now lasts about a month longer.
Walrus and hungry bears
wait and wait for the sea to freeze over.
The males get restless
and start sparring.
They're testing each other's skills.
It's fun.
When it's not
mating season, these fierce rivals are content to live and let live.
The bears need
to get back out to their hunting grounds now that the sea ice is
finally freezing over.
This water is literally as cold as ice.
The salt keeps it from freezing.
These sea anemones look healthy.
But the greenhouse gases we release thousands of miles
away have made the Arctic Ocean more acidic.
Down here, there's only one exit
and it's pretty scary thinking you could be trapped.
Diving beneath the ice takes courage.
But for the people who devote their lives to studying the Arctic
taking risks is part of the job.
Each spring in Alaska
large herds of caribou set out on a long journey.
No one has ever tracked the entire migration on foot
until now.
Leanne Allison, a filmmaker
and Karsten Heuer, a biologist
plan to live with the herd for five months.
We're gonna do this trip to see what the caribou mothers go through
and to see this migration from their perspective.
And it's gonna be our honeymoon as well.
Honeymoon?
These newlyweds will follow the caribou
all the way to their birthing grounds.
These caribou mothers are on a tight schedule.
Yeah, that's gotta be caribou paths. Look at that drainage coming in.
Yeah, just over there
With the warm spring, the snowpacks melted early.
And so the rivers are flooding
and this is gonna be a problem for the caribou to get across.
This is climate change slowing down the herd.
This water is so cold it can stop your heart.
We've gotta get across fast.
The caribou moms are traveling hundreds of miles
to get to the coastal plain of Alaska
which is the safest place to give birth.
This year the migration is about three weeks late
so some of the caribou mothers have to give birth along the way.
Some of these calves are just a week
or two old, and they're easy pickings for bears and wolves.
We're seeing a lot of calves get separated from their mothers.
A lot of them don't survive.
The caribou finally reach their goal.
This is the place where the calves have their best chance to survive.
But just a few days after they give birth, the botflies hatch.
These bugs are potentially deadly to these caribou.
They can burrow up their noses, lay their eggs there
and they can set off stampedes.
It's why caribou head for the high country: to get away.
Caribou mothers are having a tough time as the Arctic warms.
But polar bear mothers face an even greater struggle.
To learn more about polar bears
a team of naturalists and filmmakers gathered on Svalbard Island
in Norway.
They signed on with a seasoned captain and headed north.
My name is Bjorne Kvernmo
and I'm captain of this ship.
There are over 20,000 polar bears in the world
and most of them are camera-shy.
To photograph these reluctant film stars
John Downer uses clever robotic cameras
camouflaged in white.
The bears were curious about the remote cameras.
One bear was especially helpful.
It's hard to keep up when you're only 3 months old.
They all wanted to know what made the cameras tick.
Next year we're coming back with stronger cases.
Bears nearly always avoid people
which made filming them next to impossible.
Then the team got lucky.
They found a mom with two cubs, about 7 months old.
For five days, she never left their boat.
Because the sun never sets in the summer
bedtime is anytime.
Before long, we saw what a tough job this mother faces
protecting her babies from male polar bears.
Hungry males prefer seals
but in a pinch, they have always gone after defenseless cubs.
Even a half-ton male can be sneaky when he's on the prowl.
The mother seemed to pick up the scent of a male.
But we couldn't see him.
We didn't know why she was agitated.
We finally spotted a male quite a ways off
zeroing in on the mother and her cubs.
Now that seals are so hard to catch, starving males
might be targeting cubs more often.
Before he got close, the male lost the scent.
But next time
things could be much different.
The male cub followed the mother everywhere, step-for-step.
But the female was more inquisitive.
When mothers go hungry
they're too lean to nurse more than one cub
but this mother had enough milk to nurse two.
She was always on alert.
If she caught the scent of a male
she'd hustle the cubs off to safety.
This mother fended off four attacks in five days.
The moms have one thing going for them:
They're willing to die to protect their cubs.
Playful cubs can really work up an appetite.
Tasty seals may hide, but hungry moms can sniff them out.
When you want to grab a bite to eat up here
timing is everything.
Peek-a-boo.
The cubs finish everything on their plate
but the scent of fresh seal meat attracts attention.
Trouble always seems to
come along when you least expect it.
The mother leads her cubs away, downwind.
But the male picks up the family's scent again.
We watch helplessly as the male sneaks up.
The mother senses danger, but from where?
The male outweighs the mother two-to-one
but all that weight doesn't slow him down one bit.
Once the huge male locks in on his target, he never lets up.
The male keeps gaining on the family.
Then the mother turns to face him
slowing him down just long enough for her frightened cubs to escape.
At the moment of truth, the mother sent a very clear message:
"You can get to my cubs if you want
but you'll have to kill me first."
This brave mother was willing to do anything to protect her cubs.
But she's powerless to save the habitat they need to survive.
There are few truly wild places left
and none so majestic as this.
But the Arctic is warming faster than it has for thousands of years
and losing its dazzling crown of ice.
Arctic animals need ice to survive.
They live in a delicate balance with the natural world
mothers most of all.
How could they live in a world without ice?
The mothers here nurture their young so lovingly.
Perhaps they can inspire us
to protect their home with that same care.
Perhaps we can help keep the Arctic white.
The Arctic is one of the hardest places on Earth to survive
but to a polar bear, it's paradise.
Cubs play and resilient mothers thrive.
It's the only home they'll ever have.