“I think everyone’s holding their breath to see what happens with this El Niño shift over the next four or five years,” Geoff York, senior director of research and policy with Polar Bears International, says. The group, with offices in Bozeman, Montana and Winnipeg, is a non-profit organization dedicated to polar bear conservation across the Arctic.

The world is currently facing a human-caused extinction crisis. At COP15, the United Nations biodiversity conference, 196 countries are coming together to try to do something about it. Photo: KT Miller / Polar Bears International