Polar bears and petroleum development risk assessment

Polar bears are potentially very vulnerable to oil spills, because their fur conducts heat to a much higher degree and thus insulates much less if exposed to oil. Additionally, polar bears groom their fur when they come in contact with oil and ingestion of oil can make them very ill or even be fatal.

Risk models have thus been developed to indicate how various scenarios for arctic oil spills could potentially impact local polar bear stocks. However, available risk models do not incorporate probabilities of polar bears walking on the ice or being exposed to oil in the water, given they are in the general area of a modelled oil spill. Nor do the models take into account how oil persistence varies over time depending on local sea ice and water conditions, or normal patterns of polar bear movements in and out of the actual areas in appropriate time frames.

This project will develop more realistic models for the risk to polar bears from oil spills using new satellite telemetry tags developed in collaboration with the Sea Mammal Research Unit in Scotland that monitor swimming behaviour of female polar bears as well as movements within different areas. The data will be used to model probabilities of exposure to oil given various scenarios of oil spills. This NPI programme is financially assisted by Statoil.

Prosjektleder: Dr. Jon Aars