Where Do Polar Bears Live? - WorldAtlas - Range Of Polar Bears

Looking for:

Where are the most polar bears in the world 

Click here to ENTER

     

5 Places Where Polar Bears Live in the Wild (with Photos) - WildlifeTrip.

 

Canadians have a long-standing connection with polar bears, as well as a healthy population that either lives permanently or at least spends large portions of their time in the nation. These majestic bears also have a deep connection to the Inuit culture, where they are known as Nanuk.

Canada is also home to the southernmost polar bear subpopulation. While the bears usually keep to the northern parts of Canada, they can be found as far south as the Southern parts of Hudson Bay, in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. Similar to the Inuit term "Nanuk," polar bears in Greenland are often referred to as Nanoq.

This sparsely populated icy nation sparse in terms of humans is home to more than 4, polar bears, meaning it has a greater population of polar bears than any other region, although many of these bears do travel between Greenland and Canada. Polar bears thrive in this cold and barren landscape, but the remote nature of Greenland means that there are less data and knowledge about the polar bears in this region.

The Norse word for "polar bear" is Isbjorn, or ice bear. Though there are fewer polar bears that reside in Norway than Greenland, it is still one of the most highly populated regions, with some 2, polar bears.

Of these, most live or spend the majority of their time on sea ice and ice flows in the Barents Sea , and among the islands and glacial landscapes of Svalbard. Norway also has a very active polar bear tracking and research institute, known as The Norwegian Polar Institute. This group has been responsible for tagging and tracking roughly bears per year, and has been active for more than 40 years.

This research has included everything from health and diet monitoring, to GPS tracking. This data has been used to help understand the natural habits and habitats of polar bears, as well as aid in conservation efforts. Like most polar regions and cold climate countries, polar bears have also been known to reside in Russia. Though there has been less research done in this region of the world, it is estimated that roughly 3, polar bears live within Russia.

Despite the lack of research in these parts, Russia does have a large portion of protected land, which helps provide polar bears and other wildlife with a safe refugee and protected habitat. This 14, square km area is known as the Russian Arctic National Park. Polar bears can also be found in certain areas of the United States, namely within Alaska. There are two known subpopulations in Alaska, the Chukchi Sea population, which is the larger of the two, and those that reside in the Southern Beaufort Sea.

Unfortunately, the bears in these regions have been adversely affected by climate change, and polar bears have become weaker, succumbing to the elements more easily as cubs, or dying due to lack of food supply.

This is especially true of the subpopulation in the Beaufort sea region. While seeing one up close and personal is an awe-inspiring experience, hardy adventurers will need to trek to the isolated world of the Arctic Circle if they are to stand any chance at spotting one in the wild. Although they are born on land, polar bears spend most of their lives on the vast and ever-changing sea ice, roaming over snow, ice and open water in search of seals — their main prey and food source.

Much larger than females, adult males can weigh up to a huge kilos and reach a length of three meters, with the beautiful bears living up to 25 years in the wild. Classified as a vulnerable species, they are reckoned to number between 20, and 30, in total. So where do Polar Bears Live in the wild? Very sparsely populated, it boasts unspoiled snowy scenery with glaciers and fjords found alongside endless tundra and ice floes. This, however, is a very inaccessible area with much of the remote region protected as part of Northeast Greenland National Park; remarkably the largest national park in the world.

As such, the best chance of seeing the incredible creatures in the wild is to take an epic Arctic cruise along the east coast of the island. The undoubted highlight, however, is finally spotting one of them and their off-white fur against the snowy landscapes and ice all around them. Famed for being home to more polar bears than people, the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard can be found midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole.

With most of its isolated and inhospitable islands coated in glaciers and snow, it is no wonder that the archipelago is home to thousands of polar bears. After several years of negotiations, Russia and the United States signed an agreement in October to jointly set quotas for indigenous subsistence hunting in Alaska and Chukotka. This status was re-evaluated and confirmed in April , November , and April Polar bears continue to be listed as a species of special concern in Canada because of their sensitivity to overharvest and because of an expected range contraction caused by loss of Arctic sea ice.

More than bears are killed per year by humans across Canada, [48] a rate calculated by scientists to be unsustainable for some areas, notably Baffin Bay.

Government of Nunavut officials announced that the polar bear quota for the Baffin Bay region would be gradually reduced from per year to 65 by Because of the way polar bear hunting quotas are managed in Canada, attempts to discourage sport hunting would actually increase the number of bears killed in the short term. Canada allocates a certain number of permits each year to sport and subsistence hunting, and those that are not used for sport hunting are re-allocated to indigenous subsistence hunting.

Whereas northern communities kill all the polar bears they are permitted to take each year, only half of sport hunters with permits actually manage to kill a polar bear.

If a sport hunter does not kill a polar bear before his or her permit expires, the permit cannot be transferred to another hunter. In August , Environment Canada published a national polar bear conservation strategy.

In Greenland, hunting restrictions were first introduced in and expanded by executive order in However, in it imposed a limit of , while also allowed recreational hunting for the first time. Polar bears were hunted heavily in Svalbard, Norway throughout the 19th century and to as recently as , when the conservation treaty was signed. Some regulations of hunting did exist. In , poisoning was outlawed while in , certain denning sights were declared off limits.

The killing of females and cubs was made illegal in Killing of polar bears decreased somewhat 25—30 years before the treaty. Despite this, the polar bear population continued to decline and by , only around bears were left in Svalbard. Only with the passage of the treaty did they begin to recover. The Soviet Union banned the harvest of polar bears in ; however, poaching continued, and is estimated to pose a serious threat to the polar bear population.

In , the Russian government made subsistence hunting legal for indigenous Chukotkan peoples only, a move supported by Russia's most prominent bear researchers and the World Wide Fund for Nature as a means to curb poaching. Polar bears are currently listed as "Rare", of "Uncertain Status", or "Rehabilitated and rehabilitating" in the Red Data Book of Russia , depending on population. It banned hunting except by indigenous subsistence hunters , banned importing of polar bear parts except polar bear pelts taken legally in Canada , and banned the harassment of polar bears.

On 15 May , the United States Department of the Interior listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act , citing the melting of Arctic sea ice as the primary threat to the polar bear. Importing products made from polar bears had been prohibited from to under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and restricted between and Under those restrictions, permits from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service were required to import sport-hunted polar bear trophies taken in hunting expeditions in Canada.

The permit process required that the bear be taken from an area with quotas based on sound management principles. Fish and Wildlife Service published a draft conservation management plan for polar bears to improve their status under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Polar bear population sizes and trends are difficult to estimate accurately because they occupy remote home ranges and exist at low population densities.

Polar bear fieldwork can also be hazardous to researchers. Risks to the polar bear include climate change , pollution in the form of toxic contaminants, conflicts with shipping, oil and gas exploration and development, and human-bear interactions including harvesting and possible stresses from recreational polar-bear watching. According to the World Wildlife Fund , the polar bear is important as an indicator of Arctic ecosystem health.

Polar bears are studied to gain understanding of what is happening throughout the Arctic, because at-risk polar bears are often a sign of something wrong with the Arctic marine ecosystem. The International Union for Conservation of Nature , Arctic Climate Impact Assessment , United States Geological Survey and many leading polar bear biologists have expressed grave concerns about the impact of climate change , with some predicting extinction by The key danger posed by climate change is malnutrition or starvation due to habitat loss.

Polar bears hunt seals from a platform of sea ice. Rising temperatures cause the sea ice to melt earlier in the year, driving the bears to shore before they have built sufficient fat reserves to survive the period of scarce food in the late summer and early fall. In addition to creating nutritional stress, a warming climate is expected to affect various other aspects of polar bear life: changes in sea ice affect the ability of pregnant females to build suitable maternity dens.

Thawing of permafrost would affect the bears who traditionally den underground, and warm winters could result in den roofs collapsing or having reduced insulative value. For the polar bears that currently den on multi-year ice, increased ice mobility may result in longer distances for mothers and young cubs to walk when they return to seal-hunting areas in the spring.

Problematic interactions between polar bears and humans, such as foraging by bears in garbage dumps, have historically been more prevalent in years when ice-floe breakup occurred early and local polar bears were relatively thin. Increased human-bear interactions, including fatal attacks on humans, are likely to increase as the sea ice shrinks and hungry bears try to find food on land.

The effects of climate change are most profound in the southern part of the polar bear's range, and this is indeed where significant degradation of local populations has been observed. This subpopulation feeds heavily on ringed seals in late spring, when newly weaned and easily hunted seal pups are abundant.

The late spring hunting season ends for polar bears when the ice begins to melt and break up, and they fast or eat little during the summer until the sea freezes again. Due to warming air temperatures, ice-floe breakup in western Hudson Bay is currently occurring three weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, reducing the duration of the polar bear feeding season.

The body condition of polar bears has declined during this period; the average weight of lone and likely pregnant female polar bears was approximately kg lb in and kg lb in Geological Survey projects that two-thirds of polar bears will disappear by In Alaska, the effects of sea ice shrinkage have contributed to higher mortality rates in polar bear cubs, and have led to changes in the denning locations of pregnant females.

Thus, now the Alaskan population more resembles the world population in that it is more likely to den on land. A new development is that polar bears have begun ranging to new territory. While not unheard of but still uncommon, polar bears have been sighted increasingly in larger numbers ashore, staying on the mainland for longer periods of time during the summer months, particularly in North Canada, traveling farther inland.

Polar bears accumulate high levels of persistent organic pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyl PCBs and chlorinated pesticides. Due to their position at the top of the ecological pyramid , with a diet heavy in blubber in which halocarbons concentrate, their bodies are among the most contaminated of Arctic mammals.

PCBs have received the most study, and they have been associated with birth defects and immune system deficiency. Many chemicals, such as PCBs and DDT , have been internationally banned due to the recognition of their harm on the environment.

Their concentrations in polar bear tissues continued to rise for decades after being banned, as these chemicals spread through the food chain. Since then, the trend seems to have abated, with tissue concentrations of PCBs declining between studies performed from to and studies performed from to Oil and gas development in polar bear habitat can affect the bears in a variety of ways. An oil spill in the Arctic would most likely concentrate in the areas where polar bears and their prey are also concentrated, such as sea ice leads.

Polar bears exposed to oil spill conditions have been observed to lick the oil from their fur, leading to fatal kidney failure. Disturbance of these sensitive sites may trigger the mother to abandon her den prematurely, or abandon her litter altogether. Steven Amstrup and other U. Geological Survey scientists have predicted two-thirds of the world's polar bears may disappear by , based on moderate projections for the shrinking of summer sea ice caused by climate change, [92] [] though the validity of this study has been debated.

By , they could disappear from Greenland entirely and from the northern Canadian coast, leaving only dwindling numbers in the interior Arctic Archipelago. Polar bears diverged from brown bears ,—, years ago and have survived past periods of climate fluctuation. It has been claimed that polar bears will be able to adapt to terrestrial food sources as the sea ice they use to hunt seals disappears.

Warnings about the future of the polar bear are often contrasted with the fact that worldwide population estimates have increased over the past 50 years and are relatively stable today. There are several reasons for the apparent discordance between past and projected population trends: estimates from the s and s were based on stories from explorers and hunters rather than on scientific surveys.

Third, the recent effects of climate change have affected sea ice abundance in different areas to varying degrees. Debate over the listing of the polar bear under endangered species legislation has put conservation groups and Canada's Inuit at opposing positions; [46] the Nunavut government and many northern residents have condemned the U.

For the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, polar bears have long played an important cultural and material role. Indeed, it has been suggested that Arctic peoples' skills in seal hunting and igloo construction has been in part acquired from the polar bears themselves.

The Inuit and Alaska Natives have many folk tales featuring the bears including legends in which bears are humans when inside their own houses and put on bear hides when going outside, and stories of how the constellation that is said to resemble a great bear surrounded by dogs came into being. These legends reveal a deep respect for the polar bear, which is portrayed as both spiritually powerful and closely akin to humans. The human-like posture of bears when standing and sitting, and the resemblance of a skinned bear carcass to the human body, have probably contributed to the belief that the spirits of humans and bears were interchangeable.

Among the Chukchi and Yupik of eastern Siberia , there was a longstanding shamanistic ritual of "thanksgiving" to the hunted polar bear. After killing the animal, its head and skin were removed and cleaned and brought into the home, and a feast was held in the hunting camp in its honor. To appease the spirit of the bear, traditional song and drum music was played, and the skull was ceremonially fed and offered a pipe. The Nenets of north-central Siberia placed particular value on the talismanic power of the prominent canine teeth.

These were traded in the villages of the lower Yenisei and Khatanga rivers to the forest-dwelling peoples further south, who would sew them into their hats as protection against brown bears. It was believed that the "little nephew" the brown bear would not dare to attack a man wearing the tooth of its powerful "big uncle", the polar bear.

The skulls of killed polar bears were buried at sacred sites, and altars, called sedyangi , were constructed out of the skulls. Several such sites have been preserved on the Yamal Peninsula. Their distinctive appearance and their association with the Arctic have made polar bears popular icons, especially in those areas where they are native.

The Canadian two-dollar coin carries an image of a lone polar bear on its reverse side, while a special millennium edition featured three. Coca-Cola has used images of the polar bear in its advertising, [] and Polar Beverages , Nelvana , Bundaberg Rum , Klondike bars , and Fox's Glacier Mints all feature polar bears in their logos. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Species of bear native largely to the Arctic Circle. This article is about the animal. For other uses, see Polar bear disambiguation. For other uses, see Ice Bears disambiguation. Temporal range: Pleistocene -recent [1]. Conservation status. Vulnerable IUCN 3. Phipps , [4]. A female bear at the Ranua Zoo. Further information: Climate change in the Arctic. This section needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.

December Polar Research. Archived from the original on 9 October Retrieved 13 January Retrieved 19 November Retrieved 14 January A voyage towards the North Pole undertaken by His Majesty's command, London: W.

Bowyer and J. Nicols, for J. Archived from the original on 7 July Mammalian Species : 1—7. JSTOR OCLC Defenders of Wildlife. Retrieved 13 June United States Fish and Wildlife service. Archived from the original PDF on 11 July Retrieved 9 September The polar bear is the largest member of the bear family, with the exception of Alaska's Kodiak bears , which equal polar bears in size.

ISBN In Wilson, D. Johns Hopkins University Press. Animal Diversity Web. University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. Archived from the original on 24 October Retrieved 27 October Polar Bears. University of Michigan Press. Archived from the original on 8 July Retrieved 8 July Collins English Dictionary.

Archived from the original on 15 October Retrieved 21 October The Arctic Sounder. Archived from the original on 17 December Retrieved 4 September Collins Latin Gem Dictionary. London: Collins. The Marine Mammal Center. February Archived from the original on 4 June The Inuit name for the polar bear is nanook. Archived from the original on 4 May Retrieved 20 March Grand Quebec in French. A Greek-English Lexicon Abridged ed. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Molecular Biology and Evolution. PMID Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Bibcode : PNAS.. PMC Acta Zoologica Fennica. Conservation Biology. S2CID Bibcode : Natur. Current Biology. Bibcode : Sci The New York Times. Retrieved 24 July Range-wide status review of the polar bear Ursus maritimus PDF. Archived from the original PDF on 4 March Retrieved 29 December Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Marine Mammals of the World: Systematics and Distribution.

Special Publications of the Society for Marine Mammals. The Society for Marine Mammalogy. Archived from the original on 6 January Bears: Their Biology and Management.

Molecular Ecology. Retrieved 17 November — via ResearchGate. Integrative and Comparative Biology. Polar Bears International. Archived from the original on 19 June Retrieved 14 July ISSN The Atlantic. Retrieved 20 June Polar Bear Specialist Group. Archived from the original on 21 December Retrieved 12 April Iceland Monitor.

Retrieved 29 July Archived from the original on 3 May Retrieved 30 December Summary of polar bear population status Archived 24 December at the Wayback Machine. Thewissen Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals.

Gulf Professional Publishing. Journal of Marine Systems. Bibcode : JMS Basic Biology. Archived from the original on 22 April Archived from the original PDF on 5 June Retrieved 22 March The polar bear is the largest member of the bear family, with the exception of Alaska's Kodiak brown bears, a brown bear subspecies, which equal polar bears in size.

Journal of Zoology. Ecology Letters. Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals 2nd ed. The Guinness Book of Animal Records. Enfield, Middlesex : Guinness Superlatives. Retrieved 15 September Archived from the original on 2 December Retrieved 1 July Archived from the original on 26 February The Polar Bear.

Moscow: Nauka. Polar bear. Novak, J. Baker, M. Obbard, and B. Malloch, eds. Churchill Polar Bears. Retrieved 27 February Applied Optics.

Bibcode : ApOpt.. While the algae is harmless to the bears, it is often a worry to the zoos housing them, and affected animals are sometimes washed in a salt solution, or mild peroxide bleach to make the fur white again. Journal of Mammalogy. Archived from the original PDF on 10 January Am Canadian Journal of Zoology. Polar Biology.

Retrieved 21 January Kieran Mulvaney, Discovery News. Hoshino's Alaska. Chronicle Books. University of Toronto Press. PBS Nature. Archived from the original on 16 June Forecasting the range-wide status of polar bears at selected times in the 21st Century PDF. Reston, Virginia: U. Geological Survey.