First published March 28, 2022. Latest update April 2024.
This page is intended to be updated annually with new data on these metrics (as part of Action HBC-A5 Report findings on human-bear conflicts which end in injury or death (to bears or humans) annually on the Range State website for each country or subpopulation.)
Polar Bears injured or killed in conflict situations
Action HBC-A3, Establish baseline for bear injuries and deaths using existing data from 2020 was created to establish a baseline number of bears injured and killed due to conflicts with humans in order to gauge progress towards meeting Circumpolar Action Plan (CAP) Objective 5. Although a baseline from before the CAP was implemented in 2015 would be the most informative metric for gauging progress, conflict data was not collected in a consistent way among the Range States, and the baseline metric is therefore set to 2020.
In 2020 there were 58 polar bears killed in response to, or to prevent, conflicts with humans (Table 1). In 2021, this number was 62 bears and 47 bears in 2022 (data from Russia not provided beyond 2020). No polar bear injuries were reported in 2020, 2021, 2022 or 2023. Bears can be legally killed in defense of human life in Norway, the United States, and Russia. However, in Greenland and Canada bears can also be legally killed in defense of property.
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