Ian Grote Stirling OC FRSC (September 26, 1941 – May 14, 2024)[2][3] was a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada and an adjunct professor in the University of Alberta Department of Biological Sciences.
[4][5] His research has focused mostly on Arctic and Antarctic zoology and ecology, and he was one of the world's top authorities on polar bears.
[4] Over the course of his career, and well into his retirement from Environment Canada in 2007, when he became a scientist emeritus, he wrote and spoke extensively about the danger posed to polar bears by global warming.
They returned to Canada after the Second World War, settling in the mining town of Kimberley, British Columbia.
[8] In 1968, Stirling received his doctorate from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand having done his field work on the Weddell seal from Scott Base in Antarctica, followed by post-doctoral research on South Australian fur seals at the University of Adelaide in Australia.