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Polar Bear
Habitat and Distribution
Ursus maritimus Polar bear Mother and young Churchill, Canada
© Francois Pelletier/WWF-Canon
Polar bear populations can be found in northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Norway and Russia, and there have been reports that polar bear tracks have been found as far north as the North Pole. The five million square-mile range of the polar bear circles the Arctic.
Polar bears live on the annual Arctic sea ice that provides a platform from which they can hunt, live, breed, and in some cases create maternal dens. But when the edge of the ice retreats to the north during summer, bears must follow the ice floes or become stranded on land where they must stay until the sea ice forms again in the fall. The ice is more than a simple platform however, it is an entire ecosystem inhabited by plankton and micro-organisms, which support a rich food chain that nourishes seals, that in turn, become prey for polar bears. It is the very foundation and defining characteristic of the Arctic marine ecosystem.
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