National Geographic

EXPLORE | THROUGH THE LENS# CBY CRISTINA MITTERMEIER‘Nothing PreparedMe for What I Saw’A GUTWRENCHING PHOTO.A COMPLICATED THREAT.A GLOBAL OUTCRY. BUTNATIONAL GEOGRAPHICSHOULD NOT HAVEDEFINITIVELY BLAMEDCLIMATE CHANGE FOR THISBEAR’S DEATH.``````CLIMATE CHANGE KILLS slowly and by proxy: throughfire, drought, cold, and starvation. The connectionbetween an individual animal’s death and climatechange is rarely clear—even when an animal is asemaciated as this polar bear.Photographer Paul Nicklen and I are on a missionto capture images that communicate the urgency ofclimate change. Documenting its efects on wildlifehasn’t been easy. With this image, we thought wehad found a way to help people imagine what thefuture of climate change might look like. We were,perhaps, naive. The picture went viral—and peopletook it literally.Paul spotted the polar bear a year ago on a scout-ing trip to an isolated cove on Somerset Island inthe Canadian Arctic. He immediately asked me toassemble our SeaLegacy SeaSwat team. SeaLegacy,the organization we founded in 2014, uses photog-raphy to spread the message of ocean conservation;the SeaSwat team is a deployable unit of storytellerswho cover urgent issues. The day after his call ourteam flew to an Inuit village on Resolute Bay. Therewas no certainty that we would find the bear againor that it would still be alive.When we arrived at the cove on a donated vessel,I scanned the shore with my binoculars. All I sawwere a few dilapidated buildings, some empty fueldrums, and a very desolate landscape in what seemedlike an abandoned fishing camp. We couldn’t locatethe bear. Only when it lifted its head were we able tospot it lying on the ground, like an abandoned rug,nearly lifeless. From the shape of its body, it seemedto be a large male.We needed to get closer; we boarded a Zodiacboat and motored to land. Strong winds covered our36 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC