{"id":264534,"date":"2026-01-30T00:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T00:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/264534\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T00:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T00:49:07","slug":"polar-bears-getting-fatter-and-healthier-amid-ice-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/264534\/","title":{"rendered":"Polar bears getting “fatter and healthier” amid ice loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

While this is unexpected good news for these Arctic predators, the researchers think it is unlikely to last. <\/p>\n

As the sea ice continues to decline, bears will have to travel further to access hunting grounds, using more energy and depleting precious fat reserves.<\/p>\n

The charity Polar Bears International, external<\/a> points out that Svalbard’s polar bears were some of the most heavily-hunted in the world, until international protections were introduced in the 1970s. <\/p>\n

Experts think the new findings could be linked to the population recovering from that hunting pressure. That, combined with an increase in the number of walruses – and of reindeer – in recent decades, appears to have provided the bears with a temporary boost. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While this is unexpected good news for these Arctic predators, the researchers think it is unlikely to last.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-264534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}