sea ice

Freeze-up on Hudson Bay came later than in recent decades, but most of Churchill, Man.'s polar bears have managed to get out onto the sea ice to hunt for seals again, says Polar Bears International.

The federal government on Friday proposed listing two seals that depend on sea ice as threatened species because of the projected loss of ice from climate warming.

The report released this week marks a departure for the state, which is suing to overturn the federal listing of polar bears as a threatened species because of declining sea ice habitat.

The Americans argued at the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, that the sale of polar bears skins was compounding the loss of the animals' sea ice habitat due to climate change.

Battling hypothermia and freezing skin, a trapped teenage hunter was forced to shoot and kill a polar bear as he waited for more than a day to be rescued from a large chunk of drifting sea ice in the Canadian North.

Trampling likely killed 131 mostly young walruses forced onto the northwest coast of Alaska by a loss of sea ice, according to a preliminary report released Thursday.

Walrus swim to shore on a beach in Alaska. Thousands of walrus are congregating on Alaska's northwest coast because of receding sea ice in the Arctic.