The heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of an abandoned polar bear cub named Nora and the humans working tirelessly to save her and her species whose uncertain future in the accelerating climate crisis is closely tied to our own.
Six days after giving birth a polar bear named Aurora got up and left her den at the Columbus Zoo leaving her tiny squealing cub to fend for herself. Hours later Aurora still hadn't returned. The cub was furless and blind and with her temperature dropping dangerously the zookeepers entrusted with her care felt they had no choice: They would have to raise one of the most dangerous predators in the world themselves by hand. Over the next few weeks a group of veterinarians and zookeepers would work around the clock to save the cub whom they called Nora.
Humans rarely get as close to a polar bear as Nora's keepers got with their fuzzy charge. But the two species have long been intertwined. Three decades before Nora's birth her father Nanuq was orphaned when an Inupiat hunter killed his mother leaving Nanuq to be sent to a zoo. That hunter Gene Agnaboogok now faces some of the same threats as the wild bears near his Alaskan village of Wales on the westernmost tip of the North American continent. As sea ice diminishes and temperatures creep up year-after-year Gene and the polar bears--and everyone and everything else living in the far north--are being forced to adapt. Not all of them will succeed.
Sweeping and tender The Loneliest Polar Bear explores the fraught relationship humans have with the natural world the exploitative and sinister causes of the environmental mess we find ourselves in and how the fate of polar bears is not theirs alone.
Richard Shimell
Anjana Khatwa
Lia Leendertz
David Attenborough
Bonnie Lander Johnson
Levison Wood
Mike Unwin
Michael Morpurgo
Colin Heber-Percy
John Long
Vince Beiser
Melissa Harrison
Grant Fowlds
Richard Shimell
Ruth Padel
John Vaillant
Clive Oppenheimer
Tristan Gooley
Richard Mabey
David Hone
Olive Heffernan
Hamza Yassin
Rhys Jones
Jonny Clothier
Gail Simmons
Florence Wilkinson
Kiran Sidhu
Ben Jacob
Gregory Conti
Dr Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Royal Horticultural Society
John Wright
Edward Norfolk
Jemima Lewis
Nergiz De Baere
Porter Fox
Colin Butfield
David George Haskell
Suzie Baldwin
Stefano Mancuso
Will Burns
John Ruthven
Kim Stanley Robinson
Peter Marren
Elsa Panciroli
Peter Scott
Tristan Gooley
Neil Ansell
Olaf Fritsche
Anita Roy
Raffael Jovine
Becky Alexander
Claire Potter
Tim Ecott
Dr Dean Lomax
Natalie Fee
Bernadette Vallely
Sarah Ridley
Ambra Edwards
Chris Packham
Lars Mytting
Grant Fowlds
Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Monty Halls
Kathy Hoopmann
Mark Lane
Marine Conservation
Bill Streever
Nicholas Crane
Tony Juniper
Brian Fagan
Maggie Sandford
Nuala Gardner
Tristan Gooley
Sian Berry
Surfers Against Plastic
Tristan Gooley
Charles Foster
Tristan Gooley
Peter Reason
Robert Twigger
Archie Miles
Bernie Krause
Rob Cowen
Tristan Gooley
Colin Beavan
Jane Goodall
Helen Armitage
Andrew Bleiman
Ray Mears
Richard Heygate
John Pontin
Colin Beavan
James Jamie
Gavin Pretor-Pinney
Robert Mighall
Craig Childs
Mark Watson
John Naish
Rob Penn And Antony Woodward
Craig Childs
David Strahan
Dian Fossey
Christopher Grey-Wilson
Eileen Campbell
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Jane Goodall
Jeremy Narby
Gavin Pretor-Pinney
Ethan Greenhart
Michael Daunt
Peter Martin
Monty Don
Philip Ball
Robert Twigger
Stephen Budiansky
Stephen Budiansky
JoAnn Tuzeo-Jarolmen
Ervin Laszlo
Kim Williams
Blair Nikula
Donald Stokes
Donald Stokes
Jim Flegg
Donald Stokes
Donald Stokes
Donald Stokes
Donald Stokes
Donald Stokes
Donald Stokes
Donald Stokes