‘I know their names, what they eat’: tracking polar bears on Svalbard’s shifting icescapes | Norway

WWhen Hen Rolf-Arneg from a pistol with a pistol, it should be able to evaluate about 10 meters away, and the approximate weight of the moving animal that aims to, as well as how fat or muscle is and whether it is in any distress. Only then can make fun of the correct amount of analgesics. Fortunately, he says, polar bears are “very good drug patients”.

Ølberg is a veterinarian working with the Norwegian Qatibi Institute, and is the body responsible for monitoring the polar bears in Svles, the archipelago that is located between the mainland Norway And the northern pole. Every year he and his colleagues tracked the bears by helicopters, collecting blood, fats and hair from them and suitable for electronic collars.

Once they dare, the helicopter staff should stay away from the bear to avoid more distress. “When they start walking slightly, uninterrupted, and swaying from side to side, Alburg says that medications have an effect and then put the bear,” says Alburg. This means that arrows have fallen in a good place. If you reach fat, you will have no effect at all. This animal will be very awake. “

The goal of the annual monitoring program is not only to understand more about the general biology of Pours, but also to assess the impact of any threats on its residents. In the 1960s, when the program started, the biggest threat was hunting.

The number of bears decreased significantly even, in 1973, they were given protection when Canada, Norway, Norway, the United States and the Soviet Union signed on Agreement to preserve the polar bears. Hunting stopped and the residents of the bear – are still prosperous today. Now, the largest The threat is the collapse of the climate And the effect that will have in the coming years.

“We have really seen big changes on marine ice,” says John Aires, the chief scientist at the Norwegian Pole, who has been following the bears for more than 20 years. “People have started to see these changes in the 1990s, and of course you can still get good and bad ice years, but what really has changed is that you now have many bad ice years.”

Aars keeps pace with the wealth of the bears “by text message”. Their holes send him information on regular intervals on things such as body temperature, whether they are swimming and where they traveled.

The samples that the team takes from bears can also tell it what the bears eat, for example. “We see that they are eating more wild food than they were eating,” he says. “Things like reindeer and birds.”

This is because the retreating marine ice is the most important difference in the place where the bears go to find food. About 300 From the residents of the Parantis maritime bear, it remains in Svalbard throughout the year and hunting the ice near the islands. “When the ice melts, they are forced on the ground,” says Airez. “These bears are now much more on Earth than they were 20 to 30 years ago.”

The rest of the inhabitants of the marine ice are followed when the summer retreats northeast to Franz Joseph Land, a Russian archipelago in the Barents Sea, to hunt. Instead of returning south to Svles to make dens in the winter, as they do before, scientists believe that the marine ice declined around the Norwegian archipelago means that the bears often remain to create maternity dens in the Russian Arctic.

“The challenge will be, within several years, that the circumstances in Franz Joseph are now similar to that in Svalbard,” Airez says. “We see in many other polar bear inhabitants that we are already in a stage that had the warmer climate and the loss of marine ice is a major impact on individuals and population. We are not there yet, but we know that these bears depend on this ice.”

Meanwhile, Aars will continue to do his best for species that he knows to the individual bear in some cases. “There are some female bears that seized 10 times and I know their names, and these are the areas in which they move and when they aim to give birth. It is an honor for me to do the work that I do [getting close to the sedated bears]But for me, it is much more exciting to be there and be able to see a free bear, to watch it pass. “