Polar Bear Week

Across the Arctic, melting sea ice from climate warming is driving more polar bears ashore in more places—and for longer periods. This is leading to an uptick in encounters with people, encounters that too often end in tragedy.

To keep people and polar bears safe, communities need reliable techniques to minimize attracting bears and to deter or frighten them away from areas of human activity. Your generosity will help fund a range of coexistence projects. These include:

• Conducting research - This work ranges from researching the best tools to deter polar bears to funding waste management studies and testing ground-based radar to detect approaching bears.

• Producing safety materials - From easy-to-follow posters to coloring books tailored to the unique situations in different communities, these outreach tools share best practices on staying safe and avoiding conflict.

• Becoming "Bear Smart" - By supporting the efforts of the town of Churchill to become the world’s first “Bear Smart Community,” we're helping to develop a template that could serve as a model for other northern communities. 

• Community support - We're working with Cree communities in northern Ontario on bear-safe measures that meet their unique needs and have started collaborating with the Ny-Ȧlesund community on Svalbard on safety materials, deterrence tools, and training.