Polar bear monitoring

More than 1,000 polar bears have been captured and marked in the Svalbard area during the last 40 years as part of this annual monitoring programme. Data from this large-scale, capture-recapture experiment are the most important source of knowledge about survival and reproduction for this species in the Svalbard area.

The polar bears around Svalbard belong to a Barents Sea population that includes animals all the way across the Barents Sea region to Franz Josef Land; this entire region is protected against hunting. However, this population was hunted excessively for a century up until 1973. Other polar bear populations in the Arctic are hunted legally or illegally to some degree.

Thus, studies in Svalbard of demographic rates and population structure are very important in a comparative context to interpret the impacts of varying degrees of hunting. The monitoring programme also provides the opportunity to collect data for demographic analyses and samples are taken for a broad array of studies on ecotoxicology, health, and population genetics.

Prosjektleder: Dr. Jon Aars