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                1. Polar Bear Tracker
                  1. About the Tracker

Polar Bear Tracker project areas

The Barents Sea: Svalbard and Franz Josef Land

Research around Svalbard has shown that polar bears within the same population can have very different survival strategies.

Some bears wander over large areas across the Barents Sea hunting from the sea ice year round, whereas other bears might spend their whole life in just one of the fjords around Spitsbergen.

The Norwegian Polar Institute
WWF is funding research at the Norwegian Polar Institute to understand how polar bears use their habitat. The first 2 bears that we tracked on this site, Gro and Louise, appear to use the first strategy. They move freely throughout the Barents Sea and stop only occasionally on land. The 2 bears that were tagged in April 2005, Skadi and Borealis, were more likely to use the other strategy and never stray far from their denning areas. The 4 bears we are currently tracking in 2007 use a mixture of strategies with one bear travelling great distances over the sea ice and the other bears staying very close to the one area.

Beaufort Sea, northern Alaska, US

The US Geological Survey's (USGS) Alaska Science Center received funding from WWF, the USGS Global Climate Change Program, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), and Polar Bears International (PBI) for studies to fill key information gaps on how polar bears utilize the sea ice during different times of year. Female polar bears are captured, fitted with satellite telemetry collars, and followed throughout their annual range.

USGS researchers expect to learn more about polar bear temporal and spatial use of sea ice, selection of ice type, and examine habitat needs both on ice and along the shore.

Research will focus particularly on understanding habitat relationships and developing predictive models of seasonal polar bear distribution relative to sea ice extent and composition. This information will provide science for conservation efforts and help scientists and managers better understand the effects of global-scale events including habitat loss and climate change.

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