Description

Norway Research Report (Jon Aars)

Work of den habitat and den phenology in Svalbard have been a priority the last 20 years. Polar Bears International and Norwegian Polar Institute had a project where den cameras monitored bear families in the first days or weeks after they broke the dens in spring, and until they left the area. A paper was published on den phenology in 2025.

Work on demography in cooperation with University of Montpellier/CEFE (Fr) led in November 2024 to a PhD. Among the more important results are how age of mother and size of cubs dictates litter production and cub survival.

Studies on exotoxicology maps prevalence of different pollutants inn polar bears over time. Current studies use live polar bear cell cultures where cells are exposed to pollutants, sampling and experiments took part in spring 2025, on board the NPI Research Vessel KPH.

Work on body condition among Svalbard polar bears show that despite loss of sea ice habitat, bear condition is still good, a paper is in revision.

Preliminary results on scooter traffic and polar bear activity show that female adults use the sea ice as much during the periods with highest traffic activity, and it does not seem like bears in more trafficked areas use sea ice less than in other areas, in spring.

Subcutaneous heart and temperature loggers were implanted in nine females that also had GPS-collars in spring 2024. Five of those were collected in spring 2025 and provided data for a year, on two denning females and three that were not denning. Data will be used in studies on energetics.

A project on reindeer-polar bear interactions is ongoing, and has already yielded a afir amount of data, including from Citizen science.

Data on both condition, reproductive data, and fat soluble pollutants are part of a long term monitor series (MOSJ, monitoring of Svalbard and Jan Mayen).