Arc­tic drift ice shrinks, Spitsbergen’s polar bears doing well

The drift is in the Arc­tic Oce­an is shrin­king and shrin­king, brea­king one nega­ti­ve record after the other, but nevert­hel­ess, Svalbard’s polar bears are doing well so far – that is, in very short words, the essence of a press release by the Nor­we­gi­an Meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal Insti­tu­te that includes some infor­ma­ti­on pro­vi­ded by Jon Aars, polar bear sci­en­tist within the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te.

Dra­stic sea ice loss

The sea ice in the Arc­tic Oce­an is being lost a a dra­ma­tic pace. That is the unequi­vo­cal mes­sa­ge of a wealth of sci­en­ti­fic data, from satel­li­tes and other. In 2023, the loss of arc­tic drift ice amoun­ted to 3 mil­li­on squa­re kilo­me­t­res com­pared to the refe­rence peri­od 1981-2010, and the nega­ti­ve trend is con­ti­nuing in spi­te of a good ice win­ter 2023-24 in Spits­ber­gen.

Polar bears: the Sval­bard popu­la­ti­on

That has obvious­ly con­se­quen­ces for polar bears. The­re are appro­xi­m­ate­ly 250 polar bears living in the Sval­bard archi­pe­la­go. The num­ber 3000 that is often men­tio­ned in this con­text refers to the much lar­ger area of Sval­bard and Franz Josef Land inclu­ding sur­roun­ding sea are­as.

One of appro­xi­m­ate­ly 250 polar bears who spend their lives most­ly on land in Sval­bard.

But Svalbard’s polar bears are doing well despi­te less ice and shorter peri­ods with fro­zen fjords and ice-bound coasts. The­se bears are used to life on land and have, at least to some degree, deve­lo­ped tech­ni­ques to tap food-sources less depen­dent on sea ice or fjord ice. The­re are, for exam­p­le, tho­se bears that have deve­lo­ped the skill to hunt reinde­er.

The local popu­la­ti­on is sta­ble or even gro­wing slight­ly, accor­ding to Aars, and they are most­ly in good phy­si­cal shape.

Are­as tra­di­tio­nal used by pregnant fema­les to give birth such as Kong Karls Land and Hopen have lost their signi­fi­can­ce in this con­text becau­se of now unre­lia­ble ice con­di­ti­ons in the­se are­as. It is belie­ved that the­se fema­les now use are­as fur­ther nor­the­ast, such as Franz Josef Land in the wes­tern Rus­si­an arc­tic.

Polar bears: the ocea­nic (drift ice) popu­la­ti­on

This so far sta­ble or even slight­ly posi­ti­ve deve­lo­p­ment appli­es to polar bears in Sval­bard with a lar­ge­ly land-based way of life. Things may well be dif­fe­rent for polar bears fol­lo­wing what we might con­sider a more clas­si­cal way of life for a polar bear, in the drift ice far from land.

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