Polar bears are drowning, but are they endangered?

A year ago (December 18, 2005), the Sunday Times from Britain reported on polar bears drowning. Due to global warming, the gaps of open water between the ice floes where the bears rest are becoming so large that the bears can't make it across.

The source quoted by the Sunday Times was a study by the U. S. government, specifically the Minerals Management Service. The related paper appears to be this one: "Observations of mortality associated with extended open-water swimming by polar bears in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea", by Charles Monnett and Jeffrey S. Gleason, in the journal Polar Biology, Vol. 29, No. 8, July 2006.

The abstract does NOT attribute the polar bear drownings to global warming, but says that the deaths of polar bears may increase "if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open water periods continues."

I'm willing to bet that pack ice regression and open water is an effect of global warming. It's possible that the paper says so directly; I only read the abstract because I don't have a subscription to the database where the full paper resides.