Alaskan grizzly bears choose berries over salmon — thanks to climate change, study finds

When one thinks of climate change, a few things come to mind: rising sea levels, more powerful storms and the potential for an acceleration in extinctions.

Now, you can add the dietary choices of grizzly bears to that list, according to study published Aug. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Usually, the freshwater streams of Kodiak Island, Alaska, brim with salmon that grizzlies love to eat in the early summer. Then, later in the summer, the bears decide to munch on elderberries, which typically ripen in late August and early September, according to the Telegraph.

But the study, conducted in 2014, found that the bears weren’t hunting for salmon in the first months of summer — instead, they opted for red elderberries, which came into season early because of warming temperatures from climate change.

“What you have is a scrambling of the schedule,” said William Deacy, a biologist at Oregon State University that studied the phenomenon, according to the Telegraph. “It’s essentially like if breakfast and lunch were served at same time and then there is nothing to eat until dinner.”

“You have to choose between breakfast and lunch because you can only eat so much at a time.”

So why do the bears prefer berries over salmon?

While salmon is around 85 percent protein, according to Inside Climate News, the berries are just 13 to 14 percent protein. And consuming something with less protein enables the bears to grow faster, as salmon requires more energy to break the food down.

But there’s some cause for concern about this change.

The fish carcasses enriched the soil of the forests that surrounded the fresh water streams, according to Telegraph. Bears usually kill up to 75 percent of the salmon, according to Inside Climate News, and a drastic decrease in dead fish to provide nutrients could imperil the surrounding ecosystem.

And while the Alaskan grizzly bears are able to cope with the changes, other bears with a more limited food supply might not be able to, Deacy said.

The problem doesn’t seem likely go away anytime soon. Each decade, red elderberries are ripening two and a half days earlier — which means that they will regularly occur during peak salmon season by 2070 if the trend continues.

This story was originally published August 28, 2017 at 12:49 PM with the headline "Alaskan grizzly bears choose berries over salmon — thanks to climate change, study finds."