Declining number of polar bears

The World Wildlife Fund for Nature lists toxic pollution, oil exploration, and hunting, as well as climate change, as the threats polar bears face.
Polar bears are found throughout the circumpolar Arctic on pack ice, along or near coasts, and on islands:
The situation has become dire enough for the Bush Administration in the US to propose to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
This itself is an interesting turn of events as the Bush Administration has typically been reluctant to acknowledge concerns about climate change, and a lot of lobbying by environmental groups has led to this proposal.
Earlier in 2006, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) had already put the polar bear on their Red List of Threatened Species.