Polar bears in Canada's West Hudson Bay - on the southern edge of the Arctic - continue to die in large numbers, a new government study of land-based predators has found.. It is especially difficult for females and cubs.

Researchers surveyed the western part of Hudson Bay, home to the city of Churchill, dubbed the "

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" Derocher did not participate in the study.

Since the 1980s, the number of bears in the region has decreased by almost 50%, the authors of the study found.. The ice they need to survive is disappearing.

Polar bears depend on Arctic sea ice. They use it for hunting, waiting for seals, their favorite delicacy, to come up to breathe near the cracks..

But because the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world due to climate change, sea ice melts early in the summer and stays frozen longer in the fall..

This has resulted in many polar bears having less territory in which they can live, hunt and breed..

Mortality among young bears and females in West Hudson Bay is a major concern, researchers say.

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Young bears need energy to grow and can't survive for long periods of time without enough food, and female bears struggle because they spend a lot of energy nursing and raising their offspring..

The ability of polar bears in western Hudson Bay to reproduce will decrease, Atkinson said, "

Recall that Polish scientists who work in the Svalbard archipelago filmed a rare polar bear hunt for the first time.. A young female animal drove a deer into the water, drowned it, and then pulled it ashore and began to eat.. According to researchers, this is due to the fact that due to the melting of the Arctic ice, polar bears change their diet..