The Loneliest Polar Bear: A True Story of Survival and Peril on the Edge of a Warming World

This is the story of Nora, an abandoned polar bear cub, and the humans who tirelessly saved her and her species, whose uncertain future in the accelerating climate crisis is intertwined with ours. Six days after giving birth, Aurora, a polar bear at the Columbus Zoo, abandoned her cub, leaving it furless, blind, and dangerously cold. Three decades before Nora’s birth, her father was orphaned when an Inupiat hunter killed his mother and sent him to a zoo. Gene Agnaboogok, that hunter, faces the same threats as the wild bears near his Alaskan village of Wales. As sea ice melts and temperatures rise, Agnaboogok and the polar bears—and everyone else in the far north—must adapt, but not all will succeed.

This book explores the relationship between humans and the natural world, the causes of environmental degradation, and how the fate of polar bears is not solely theirs.

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