How we’re helping conserve polar bears, the Arctic’s apex predator

Joshua Ostroff

Known as nanuq in Inuktitut, around 16,000 polar bears live, breed and rule the sea ice as apex predators in the Canadian Arctic — primarily across Nunavut’s two million square kilometres — with subpopulations ranging into the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, Quebec, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Ontario. That’s about two-thirds of the world’s total polar bears, leaving Canada a huge responsibility to conserve this iconic species as their world warms around them.

Polar bears up on a cliff
A polar bear and her young in their cliff den along a northwest Baffin Island fjord © Joshua Ostroff / WWF-Canada

As the only international environmental NGO with a permanent office in Nunavut, we help meet this responsibility in part through our Arctic Species Conservation Fund (ASCF), which has supported more than 100 stewardship and research projects since 2016. For polar bears, this work has ranged from mapping denning habitats and updating subpopulation estimates to reducing human-wildlife conflict that can arise when these massive creatures wander into communities.

Whale Cove, a nearly 500-person hamlet hugging the upper west coast of Hudson Bay in Nunavut’s Kivalliq region, is one such community. Climate change has been bringing the bears into town more often because the sea ice takes longer to freeze, but as the community’s former mayor Stanley Adjuk told us in 2023: “It’s their migration route. We’re on their land. Whale Cove is on a route they have been taking for a long time.”

To make this coexistence safer for both people and polar bears, we’ve been using the ASCF to support a monitoring and patrol program since 2019. Led by the Issatik Hunters and Trappers Organization, a pair of patrollers drive around on ATVs and snowmobiles during peak season, ready to deter bears and protect residents.

Manager of the polar bear patrol in Whale Cove shows data capturing device while seated on a snowmobile
Victoria Kidlapik, manager of the polar bear patrol in Whale Cove showing the SMART data capturing device on a snowmobile.

In the past year, they’ve transitioned to using SIKU — a mobile app created by and for Inuit to share wildlife sightings and environmental info like sea-ice conditions — to track polar bears sightings and potential attractants, including other animals, improving how their monitoring data is stored and shared.

Another way we’re trying to help improve coexistence is by supporting efforts to share Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ), a form of traditional knowledge, which is how Inuit have always passed on how to appropriately live alongside wildlife and nature.

Nanuk Narratives, a documentary series co-funded by the ASCF, explores how Inuit knowledge can be more accessible, influential and better implemented for long-term stewardship and sustainable Inuit harvesting of polar bears.

By showcasing Inuit from across the eastern Arctic (Nunavut, Nunatsiavut and Nunavik) and documenting their stories and experiences with the Davis Strait subpopulation, the Inuktitut-language series helps keep the wisdom of past generations alive to teach today’s and tomorrow’s generations how to live safely and respectfully alongside polar bears.

The ASCF has also been supporting efforts to help incorporate IQ into scientific population surveys. With polar bears living in such remote and expansive habitats, it’s challenging to assess population abundance and condition.

Two polar bears looking at a camera trap
Two polar bears looking at a camera trap © naturepl.com / Steven Kazlowski / WWF

To improve the quality of the results, we’ve been working with the Government of Nunavut and Integrated Ecological Research to develop a more holistic survey design. By embedding IQ from local communities into the decision-making process and fieldwork, starting last year in Foxe Basin between Baffin Island and Hudson Bay, we ensure Inuit histories of living alongside polar bears can make this crucial data collection more accurate and effective.

And farther south, we’re similarly supporting a multi-year, field-based and community-led study in the Eeyou Marine Region of James Bay that combines traditional and scientific knowledge to learn more about the world’s southernmost polar bear subpopulation.

Working with local Indigenous governments and hunter and trapper organizations as well as McGill University researchers, this project uses hair snares and camera traps to collect data on genetics, diet, body condition and habitat while developing non-invasive techniques to help assuage concerns from Indigenous communities across the Arctic.

By Joshua Ostroff and Missy MacLellan