Wildlife photographer posts heartbreaking video of starving polar bear

A heartbreaking video is making its way across social media, leaving its viewers feeling helpless.

A wildlife photographer named Paul Nicklen captured the gut-wrenching moment while filming on Baffin Island, a northeast Canadian territory. It's a video of a starving polar bear, clearly malnourished and suffering from atrophy.

Nicklen shared the video to his Instagram account, where it's tallied more than one million views. His point was to convey the effects of global warming, as the bear's environment was clearly lacking ice or snow.

"The simple truth is this—if the Earth continues to warm, we will lose bears and entire polar ecosystems," Nicklen wrote in the post. 

Nicklen, a contributor to National Geographic, told the publication there was nothing he could do to help the bear amid social media comments asking why he did nothing. He pointed out that he doesn't carry seal meat around on photo shoots. It's also illegal to feed wild polar bears in Canada, according to National Geographic.

Source: 12news