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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (24856)	6/27/2008 6:01:48 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 149317

Photos capture polar bears' struggle By Molly Shen A polar bear is one of the last things you'd want up close and in your face. But a Seattle photographer dedicated years to watching, documenting and getting within inches of polar bears. The results go on display at the Burke Museum on Saturday, June 28. Steven Kazlowski trained his lens on the king of the Arctic, and the pictures and his message are stunning. "I don't want to use the word 'friend,'" Kazlowski says, "but we became acquainted with each other and I felt quite safe around them and they were quite trusting of me. And that allowed me to really intimately see how they lived their lives." Kazlowski describes polar bears as extremely intelligent creatures with deep personalities and high curiosity. One photo shows a 9-month-old that broke through the ice to see Kazlowski up close -- and tried to pull him into the water to play. Another reached inside his tent while he slept and put its paw on Kazlowski's head. "I was completely freaked out and screamed and yelled. But the polar bear at that point was just as freaked out as I was and he took off and dove back into the ocean," he describes. Sometimes it was so cold, Kazlowski could only leave his tent for 10 minutes at a time to capture the shots. But his pictures also tell the story of warming and of thinning, disappearing ice. "I've been seeing the ice that used to be there through September and October, icebergs and what have you, is no longer there and we just see completely open water," he says. As the ice pulls away, Kazlowski says 90 percent of the polar bears go with it, winding up 300 miles offshore. "It's possible it could break up and dump them into the ocean, at which point you could see lots of bears drowning. "The 10 percent that go to land have to scavenge and wait for the ice to freeze back up, which is becoming later and later now." Steven Kazlowski worries about the polar bears and their ability to survive on the shrinking ice. And he hopes when you look at his pictures, you'll worry too, and that worry will turn into change. The exhibit, "The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World" will be at the Burke Museum through the end of the year. Then it goes on a nationwide tour. komonews.com