The connection between an individual animal’s death and climate change is rarely clear—even when an animal is as emaciated as this polar bear. Photographer Paul Nicklen and I are on a mission ...

This story appears in the February 2014 issue of National Geographic magazine. Photographer Paul Nicklen waded into the frigid water of a river in the Canadian Yukon and set up a camera with a ...

Then the polar bear appears ... where they can rub off their old skin against gravel and sand. Photograph by PAUL NICKLEN In satellite photos, and perhaps in our imaginations, the icescape ...

To follow them, Paul Nicklen used polar survival skills he learned as a child living among the Inuit on Canada’s Baffin Island. He read the ice and winds, and pressed the shutter even when he ...

They then head back to the Ross Sea for another three-week stint at sea. A polar bear specialist and marine biologist, Paul grew up on Baffin Island among the Inuit people. From them he developed a ...