Along a lonely stretch of Canada’s Hudson Bay coast, a polar bear mother and her three cubs curled up in a patch of moss and mud, resting in the heat. The intimate moment, frozen by photographer Christopher Paetkau, looks peaceful at first glance. Look longer, and it feels like a warning.
A tender scene that feels like a red flag
The photograph, titled “Family Rest,” shows the bears sprawled on bare tundra where, not long ago, sea ice would have lingered well into the year. The mother is fast asleep, one cub tucked against her belly, while the other two keep their heads raised, resting them on her back as if standing guard.
The bears’ fur, caked in mud instead of sea spray, hints at how far from normal this summer has become.
The image has been shortlisted for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Nuveen People’s Choice Award, run by London’s Natural History Museum. The public can choose their favourite from 24 images selected by museum staff and a panel of wildlife and photography experts, giving this quiet family portrait a global stage.
Paetkau captured the bears as they moved north towards the Arctic pack ice, pausing during the hottest part of the day. In previous decades, this journey would have taken place across more stable, longer-lasting ice. Now, increasingly warm summers mean more time spent on land, where food is scarcer and rest comes with new risks.
When polar bears trade ice for mud
Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) evolved as ice specialists. They use floating sea ice as a hunting platform, particularly for ringed seals (Pusa hispida) and bearded seals (Erignathus barbatus). Those seals surface to breathe at holes in the ice, and polar bears wait there with patience that has been refined over millennia.
That platform is shrinking. Arctic sea ice has been declining in extent and thickness for decades, with summer sea ice in particular melting earlier and refreezing later. These changes leave bears on land for longer stretches, where their usual prey is out of reach.
More time on land often means hungrier bears, longer fasts and more desperate searches for calories.
On shore, polar bears are turning to less familiar food sources such as:
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- reindeer and caribou, which are harder to catch and more energy-intensive to hunt
- bird eggs from ground-nesting species, often in large but short-lived bursts during breeding season
- beached whales or seals, when carcasses are available by chance
- human rubbish or food waste around settlements and industrial sites
These alternatives rarely match the reliable, high-fat seal meals they evolved to depend on. A stretched-out bear family lying in mud is not just a cute scene. It suggests animals running on low reserves, riding out the heat while they wait for ice that now arrives later each year.
The people’s choice: beauty and unease
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Nuveen People’s Choice Award sits alongside the museum’s main competition but puts the final decision into the hands of the public. This year’s shortlist brings together 24 images that either show remarkable behaviour or carry a powerful story.
“Family Rest” lands squarely in the second category: a gentle, domestic moment that doubles as a climate headline.
| Competition element | Details |
|---|---|
| Organizer | Natural History Museum, London |
| Award | Wildlife Photographer of the Year Nuveen People’s Choice Award |
| Shortlist size | 24 images |
| Who votes | Members of the public via online voting |
| Voting deadline | 18 March |
| Results announced | 25 March |
The winning photograph, together with four runners-up, will be displayed at the museum alongside 100 images from the main Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, which runs until July 2026. For many visitors, this will be their closest encounter with a wild polar bear, and the context behind these scenes matters.
A second polar bear story with a darker ending
“Family Rest” is not the only polar bear image on this year’s shortlist. Another photograph follows a different young bear on a hunting trip in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. That story ends in tragedy.
The cub and its mother, in search of food, approached a human settlement. Conflict followed. The mother was later found dead, and police shot the cub after it showed what officers described as threatening behaviour.
Two images, two Arctic families, both pushed to the edge by a rapidly changing environment and closer contact with people.
In one frame, the danger is climate: ice loss, heat and hunger. In the other, the trigger is proximity to human communities and infrastructure. Together, they show how polar bears are being squeezed from both sides.
Why mud-stained fur hits so hard
Polar bears are cultural icons. Many people picture them as clean white silhouettes against blue ice. Seeing them smeared with mud, tangled in seaweed or wandering through human debris jars that image.
That discomfort is exactly what makes Paetkau’s photograph so powerful. The bears are not visibly injured or emaciated, yet something feels off. The setting speaks of a species adapting on the fly to conditions outside its evolutionary comfort zone.
A few key threads sit behind that uneasy feeling:
- Heat stress: Polar bears are built for cold. Thick fur and a dense fat layer become a liability when summer temperatures rise, pushing them to rest more and move less.
- Energy budgets: Every step on land costs calories. Without regular access to seals, those costs add up fast for nursing mothers and growing cubs.
- Timing mismatch: Sea ice that melts sooner and returns later can mean that bears miss peak seal availability or are forced ashore before they have built up enough fat reserves.
From photograph to climate reality
Climate scientists often talk about “sea ice habitat,” a phrase that can feel abstract. For polar bears, habitat is not just a place; it is the hunting tool that keeps them alive. When satellite data show that summer sea ice is shrinking, that translates directly into fewer opportunities for bears to feed.
A family asleep in mud on a hot day is one snapshot of what those graphs and charts mean for living animals.
Researchers track several indicators linked to bear health: body condition, cub survival, timing of ice break-up and return, and the length of fasting periods on land. In some parts of the Arctic, such as western Hudson Bay, long-term studies already point to lighter bears and declining reproductive rates as summers lengthen.
Reading the Arctic like a warning system
The Arctic is often described as a climate early-warning region because changes show up there sooner and more sharply than at lower latitudes. That idea can feel distant if you live in a city thousands of miles away. Photographs like “Family Rest” pull it closer.
To understand the stakes, it helps to know two terms scientists use a lot:
- Arctic amplification: The Arctic is warming faster than the global average. Less sea ice means more dark ocean water that absorbs sunlight, which then melts even more ice. This feedback loop magnifies warming.
- Fasting period: The stretch of time when polar bears cannot hunt seals from the ice and must rely on stored fat. As sea ice seasons shrink, fasting periods lengthen, pushing some bears beyond their limits.
Imagine a nursing mother like the one in Paetkau’s shot. She must provide milk to three cubs while her own access to high-fat seal blubber falls. As the fasting period grows, each day lying in the heat on land becomes more of a gamble. Rest helps save energy, but if ice returns late or prey is scarce, her reserves may not carry the family through.
For people following these stories from afar, the photograph also raises a quieter, practical question: how we respond. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions slows the loss of sea ice over the coming decades. At the same time, better planning in Arctic communities – from waste management to rules on attracting wildlife – can reduce lethal encounters like the one in Svalbard. The mud on those bears’ coats is a visible reminder that both long-term climate choices and local decisions shape what scenes future photographers will capture.
