Today is international Polar Bear Day. A day to raise awareness about the conservation status of the Polar Bear. A top predator in a rapidly changing world. A world changing due to human influences. We tend think of the Arctic to  be a pristine wilderness, but air and water currents bring in invisible toxics and raising temperatures melt the sea ice they depend on for food. In the past 15 years I’ve had the privilege of visiting the high Arctic almost each year, and I clearly see changes. Glaciers recede, places that were nearly impossible to reach are now part of a nearly fixed itinerary and in most summers we find more and more very thin bears stranded on land.

Maybe it’s time for us to look in the mirror and look at what we’re doing to this world. Not only to protect the Polar Bears, or the Arctic, but also the world we live in. It appears we’ve only got one…