Often we hear about all the negative effects that climate change and pollution have on us as humans. To truly understand how bad it can be for everyone, you need to look at the animals which are affected the most by climate change and pollution.
The effects of climate change can easily be seen in polar bears. Polar bears have become the poster animal for climate change. Polar bears reside primarily in the arctic. The ice in the Arctic has started melting. Ice is not forming as early in the season, so the seals which are the polar bears’ primary food source are starting to not return to the arctic until later. This gives the polar bears less time to hunt for them and accumulate food and energy for the winter. Temperatures are rising twice as fast in the arctic and therefore the ice cover is rapidly diminishing.
The next animal which is losing their environment to climate change is the Giant panda bear. Panda’s have a very specific and small habitat that can naturally live in. As the climate has started to change these environments have become ideal for agriculture and farming in the area. This has caused people to start deforesting their habitat and plant crops. If this persists pandas will have no place to live. 
Snow leopards have also been significantly impacted by climate change. Snow Leopards depend on their camouflage for hunting and staying hidden. As their environment has started to change and the tree lines in the Himalayans have started to move up the mountains, snow leopards have a hard time disguising themselves and hunting.
Lastly, we can see the impact on sharks. The ocean has absorbed and dispersed most of the excess heat which has been producing making global warming significantly less impactful on land. But this has caused the ocean to started to heat up a little. These small changes have started causing coral reef bleaching which impacts fish all the way up the food change. Scientists have started to notice change patterns and behaviors in sharks which they believe is due to global warming. Bull sharks prefer warmer waters. Scientists have been noticing bull sharks staying north longer into the fall than previously observed just 10 years ago. They have noticed the distribution of bull sharks spreading out as waters warm. As sharks are able to spread out further scientists worry that fisherman and swimmers may have more encounters with sharks.
Hearing about all these animals being malnourished and in danger because of climate change hurts my heart. Polar bears are one of my favorite animals and seeing how humans can affect their extreme climate immensely is mind blowing. No animal deserves to be harmed because of the change in climate caused by humans. I didn’t even know that sharks and pandas are getting affected as much as you explained. Your blog really made me reflect on the poor actions humans are taking and hoping for a change in the future.
It makes sense to look at how animals are affected by climate change and pollution, as animals are going to be the first ones hit the hardest and to feel the effects of climate change and pollution. It’s very sad that these animals have to suffer the effects of humans negatively impacting their environment especially as these effects are not even reversible. The Polar bear one raises alarms because that means that the Arctic is melting and everything that was once frozen from hundreds of thousands years ago is being released. Even worse is that Polar bears have a good chance of becoming extinct. I hope scientists and environmentalists are successful in their efforts to save (what’s left of) polar bears and their environment.
I really liked this blog topic! I think it’s terrible that the environment and animals are dealing with the consequences of human behavior. The image of the polar bear really startled me because I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a sickly looking bear. There are so many so species that are going extinct that many people don’t know about, and we need to start paying attention to them more.