That story of a Polar Bear petting a dog took a darker turn

From Gizmodo, an article by George Dvorsky about a less-cute outcome:

Remember that heartwarming video from a few days ago showing a dog as it was being petted by a polar bear (photo, top)? In a twist that comes as a surprise to no one, a polar bear had to be immobilized last week after it killed and ate a dog from the same sled pack.
Brian Ladoon, who runs the 5 Dog Sanctuary in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, told CBC News that he spotted nine bears near the area where he keeps his dogs chained up, and that one of these bears killed (photo, bottom) and ate one of his dogs. “That was the only day we didn’t feed the fucking bears, the only night we didn’t put anything out”, he exclaimed.
A spokesperson from Manitoba Sustainable Development corroborated Ladoon’s account, telling the CBC that “conservation officers had to immobilize a bear in that area last week and move it to the holding facility because it killed one of his dogs”, adding that “a mother and cub were also removed, because there were allegations the bears were being fed and the females’ behavior was becoming a concern”.
In Manitoba, it’s illegal to feed polar bears because they’re listed as an endangered species. Undaunted, Ladoon said he takes “care of bears” and admits that he’s been “charged with everything in the book”.
Ian Stirling, a professor at the University of Alberta, told the CBC that Ladoon should not be allowed to chain his dogs outside in polar bear territory, and that the killer bear was likely “thin and hungry”. According to Inuit hunters, dogs will only act as guard dogs when they’re not chained up, because if they’re on a chain they know they’re vulnerable to an attack.
Stirling characterized the practice of feeding polar bears as a “death sentence”, saying that friendly relationships between dogs and polar bears can only lead to disaster. “Any situation that brings bears in to feed in an unnatural situation in association with human beings, I think, should not take place at all,” he told the CBC.

Rico says that Mother Nature is, first and foremost, "red in tooth and claw", and only occasionally cute...

Maddie Stone has another Gizmodo article about polar bears:

As Arctic sea ice flirts with its lowest levels in recorded history, polar scientists are taking the opportunity to remind us that it isn’t just humans who are screwed because of melting ice caps. Remember polar bears, global warming’s first darling poster child? They’re still around, and they’re not happy with what we’ve done to the planet.
Across the Arctic, nineteen separate polar bear subpopulations head out onto the ice in the winter and spring to hunt seals, their main source of calories. All nineteen groups have seen hunting season dramatically shortened because of climate change. That’s according to a new analysis published today in The Cryosphere, which drew on 35 years of satellite data to show that dwindling sea ice is bringing an earlier spring thaw and later fall freeze-up to all regions of the Arctic inhabited by polar bears.
On average, the researchers found that, in polar-bear-populated regions, spring ice-melt has been starting three to nine days earlier per decade since 1979, while fall freeze-up has been arriving three to nine days later. Over 35 years, this amounts to a reduction in hunting season of up to seven weeks, which is a lot of time that mamma bears could be packing on the seal blubber and feeding it to their young.
“These spring and fall transitions bound the period when there is good ice habitat available for bears to feed,” study co-author Kristin Laidre, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center said in a statement. “Those periods are also tied to the breeding season, when bears find mates and when females come out of their maternity dens with very small cubs and haven’t eaten for months.”
At the rate sea ice is dwindling, the researchers say that polar bears can expect to see their hunting season reduced by another six to seven weeks by mid-century. This, of course, will leave the enormous Arctic predators with one option: terrorizing the very scientists who want to save them. So unless we’re willing to let human-polar bear relations descend into chaos, we might want to do something about all that carbon being added to the atmosphere.

Rico says that, when the ice is all gone, the only polar bears will be in zoos...