Polar Bear

Polar bear

  • A relatively new species of bear, the polar bear is the only species adapted for polar life. Still being found all around the Arctic, there are roughly 26,000 in the wild at the current time. Whalers and for traders killed many in the 19th century, and while they have recovered experts predict that global warming is likely to lead to the extinction of the polar bear.

Polar bears are distant cousins of the Grizzly bear, and as the weather warms, polar bears are moving south and Grizzlies north. This has on at least one occasion created a so called “Pizzly”. We only know about this, because a hunter who paid to kill a polar bear accidentally shot the Pizzly. I have made it clear my lack of appreciation for the so called hunter – while I am ready to admit that in places the money is useful for conservation, I hope that with your help and this website, we might make it an irrelevance.

Found throughout the arctic, they can be seen in 

  • Alaska (USA) 4000-7000
  • Canada   16,000
  • Greenland 3500-4000
  • Norwegian islands, particularly Svalbard about 3000
  • Russia:22,000-31,000 (note, this adds up to far to many – indeed Russias population alone is above the world population, also some are shared between countries)

Over time we hope to list many places where you can visit bears and see them in their wild home, these will appear here, and a list of posts we have published on bears will appear below these links

Grizzly bears are rebounding in the USA, how can this success story continue?

Back in 1975, the American Grizzly bear was declared endangered. With only minor differences, the American Grizzly bear is the same species as the European bear, that lives from Western Spain, through Europe to the Kamchatka bear of far Eastern Russia.

In 1975 the USA lower 48 states grizzly bear population numbered somewhere between 136 animals and 312, so it was essential that it was protected. Nowerdays the same 48 states have a population of around 1500, but given that this number would have been as high as 50,000 when people started migrating to the USA in large number, this recovery is only just getting going.

Allowing bears to return is essential

Continue reading “Grizzly bears are rebounding in the USA, how can this success story continue?”

Start of the grizzly hunt in the US has been suspended, and now permanently halted

Trump’s determination to ignore all Science on all things to do with the environment continues. In recent times, his administration has decided many species should lose their protection. The conservationists must now prove that a proposed development, for example, will harm wildlife, instead of the developer having to prove that it won’t.  Continue reading “Start of the grizzly hunt in the US has been suspended, and now permanently halted”

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