Often when we imagine polar bears, we visualize them on a vast layer of whitish snow, after all their very name implies winter. But even at the poles, summer also arrives and sometimes everything in its path turns green, so many wonder what polar bears do during this season. Martín Gregus Jr., has an answer and it is simply full of tenderness; They sleep on flowered fields.
Gregus undertook a long journey to reveal the secret of the summers and found a much more encouraging scenario than he expected. Previously, the cruelty of what is destroying the northernmost ice regions has already been shown. In that sense, polar bears with a starving appearance have been seen going further south to look for any type of food.
However, Gregus encountered more hopeful scenes; polar bears in perfect health sleeping on flowered fields in the summer. That was the photographer’s goal, to show the largest land predator from another angle that had never been shown before.
He witnessed behaviors that have rarely been documented in polar bears, saw them grazing in the green fields or even saw them hunting swallow chicks by chasing them over the waves. Perhaps for now these actions are helping the population captured by Gregus survive the retreat of the ice, however, there is no doubt that in other regions of the Arctic, polar bears are dying of starvation.
Global warming has been more severe each year and each time summers reduce ice cover well beyond historical levels. This has forced bears to descend into communities populated by man in search of any type of food. A new species of bear has even been detected as a result of the crossing of polar bears with grizzly bears, which has been called grolar.
However, in the region where Gregus had the opportunity to admire the behavior of polar bears up close during the summer, it seems that the population is completely healthy and they look happy enjoying a green season and fields full of .
Image credit: Martin Gregus Jr.