Grizzly¹ bears have stopped eating salmon² in favour of elderberries after being forced to make a choice due to climate change. Warming temperatures meant that the berries are ripening³ earlier than usual, at exactly the same time as the freshwater streams on Alaska’s Kodiak Island are overflowing⁴ with sockeye salmon. 

 

由于气候变化的影响，灰熊被迫做出艰难抉择，放弃鲑鱼改吃接骨木果。温暖的气候使得浆果成熟期提前，与此同时，阿拉斯加科迪亚克岛的淡水河流里也挤满了红鲑。

 

The island's brown bears typically feed first on salmon in early summer, followed by elderberries later in the season, in late August and September. 

 

"What you have is a scrambling⁵ of the schedule," said William Deacy, a biologist at Oregon State University that studied the phenomenon. 

 

"It's essentially⁶ 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." 

 

The study found that during the unusually warm summer of 2014, the bears, which would traditionally kill up to 75 percent of the salmon, were nowhere to be seen near the streams. 

 

Instead, they were in the hills busy munching⁷ on berries, which contain less protein and therefore take less energy to break down, causing them to gain weight more quickly. 

 

Biologists warned that changes caused by a warming planet were behind the bears' unusual behavior and could affect the entire ecosystem⁸.

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