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The backlash from the public was swift and fierce. Some were angry that nothing had been done to help the bear. Nicklen insisted he could not have saved it: “It would also have been illegal to feed him, to approach him, or to do anything to ease his pain.” The last bit is not quite true. Nicklen could have called the nearest conservation officer, who would have euthanized the bear and arranged a necropsy to determine the cause of the bear’s poor condition (which was likely one of the cancers known to cause muscle wasting in polar bears). But a necropsy result would have hamstrung Nicklen’s plan to use the starving-bear video to spur action on climate change, so he and his crew simply let the bear swim away without telling anyone, extending the animal’s suffering.

Many other viewers were furious that an obviously sick animal had been deliberately exploited to advance a political agenda based on lies. Climate change was clearly not the cause of this bear’s plight: Sea-ice loss had not been exceptionally high that year and no other bears in the area were starving. Viewers felt manipulated.

National Geographic might hope its apology will bring donors back. I suspect it’s done the opposite

The criticism continued for months until, out of the blue, some previously undisclosed facts about the incident were revealed online in an essay written by Nicklen’s SeaLegacy partner, Cristina Mittermeier, destined for the August 2018 print issue of National Geographic. Mittermeier admitted Nicklen was scouting for an image that could be used to “communicate the urgency of climate change” when he spotted the emaciated bear. She confessed that she and Nicklen knew the bear was probably sick or injured before they started to film but proceeded regardless. She also revealed that days passed between Nicklen’s first sight of the starving bear and the actual filming of it: He told no one about the suffering animal while he waited for his film crew to arrive.