Raise your hand if you're not surprised by this. Amanda Prestigiacomo writes at Daily Wire:

[Photographer Cristine] Mittermeier conceded that the images of the bony, emaciated polar bear were meant to sound an alarm about climate change, though she complains that people took the image "literally."
"Photographer Paul Nicklen and I are on a mission to capture images that communicate the urgency of climate change. Documenting its effects on wildlife hasn’t been easy," she wrote. "With this image, we thought we had found a way to help people imagine what the future of climate change might look like. We were, perhaps, naive. The picture went viral — and people took it literally

Starving Polar Bear Photographer Explains Why She Couldn’t Help

Cristina Mittermeier describes the helplessness she felt while photographing the polar bear and implores readers to take climate change seriously.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/proof/2017/12/mittermeier-polar-bear-starving-climate-change/