Research around Svalbard
has shown that polar bears within the same population can have
very different survival strategies. Some bears wander over large
areas across the Barents Sea hunting from the sea ice year round,
whereas other bears might spend their whole life in just one of
the fjords around Spitsbergen.
WWF is funding research at the Norwegian
Polar Institute to understand how polar bears use their habitat.
Two bears that we tracked earlier on this site, Gro
and Louise, appear to use the first strategy.
They move freely throughout the Barents Sea and stop only occasionally
on land. We believe that our two new bears, Lena
and Yana, use the other strategy and never stray far from Storfjorden
where they den and raise cubs.
By tracking the movements of polar
bears we will learn more about how they use their habitat. This
enables us to understand how they will be affected by changes
to this habitat.
At this web site you can follow two bears. A satellite collects
information about their location every day and beams it to this
site. Once a week we provide a summary of what has been going
on with the bears and in the Barents Sea.
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We are tracking polar bears in the Barents Sea around Spitsbergen and
Franz Josef Land.
Map courtesy Norwegian Polar Institute.
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