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Climate change blamed as bears give up hibernation
Last updated at 13:37pm on 21.12.06Bears in Spain have stopped hibernating for the winter — and the cause could be climate change.
Many of the 130 bears in Spain's northern mountains who usually sleep through the cold season are still active because milder weather means they have enough nuts and berries to survive.
Juan CarlosGarcia Cordon,geography professor at Cantabria University in Santander, said: "We cannot prove that non-hibernation is caused by global warming, but everything points in that direction."
Mark Wright, science adviser to the World Wide Fund for Nature, said bears giving up hibernation was "what we would expect with climate change".
He added: "It's an indication of what's to come. Climate change is impacting on the natural world. Hitherto the warming seemed to be happening fastest at the Poles — now we're getting examples of it happening further south."
Even Russia is affected — one ski resort has started using an artificial snow machine.
In Austria organisers of a winter sports tournament trucked in 260,000 cubic feet of snow and in Sweden 250 ski resort staff have been made redundant because of the lack of snow
