'Soul-crushing scene'

A heart-wrenching video of a starving polar bear is going viral.

The thin, sickly polar bear struggles to walk as it scrounges for food in garbage barrels, obviously in great distress.

Photojournalist Paul Nicklen said the plight of the dying animal is a glimpse of what could happen to the species if the Earth continues to warm.

Nicklen, who is known his work with National Geographic, shot the video of the starving animal on Baffin Island.

The animal foams at the mouth as it buries its face into a metal barrel in search of food. In the final shot, the bear closes its eyes.

“It’s a soul-crushing scene that still haunts me, but I know we need to share both the beautiful and the heartbreaking if we are going to break down the walls of apathy. This is what starvation looks like. The muscles atrophy. No energy. It’s a slow, painful death,” he wrote in an Instagram post, which has since been seen more than one million times.

Polar bear scientist Ian Stirling warns the populations will continue to shrink as temperatures rise.

“There will be local extinctions,” Stirling told CTV News. “Western Hudson Bay has already lost about 20 per cent of its population, and it’s still declining.”

Nicklen said his video is hard evidence of the impacts of global warming.

“The simple truth is this - if the Earth continues to warm, we will lose bears and entire polar ecosystems,” he said.