New report highlights increased polar bear presence and challenging travel in Northwest Alaska as the Arctic warms up

A new report that highlights how changing climate affects travel safety and the abundance of polar bears on land in Northwest Alaska was released this week.

The first Alaska’s Changing Environment report came out in 2019 and focused on physical and biological changes in Alaska.

This year’s edition, Alaska’s Changing Environment 2.0, updates long-term climate trends and looks at changes that have emerged or intensified in recent years, said Heather McFarland, science communications lead at Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks International Arctic Research Center.

Polar bears are spending more time on shore

Among dozens of scientists and Indigenous experts across the state who contributed to the report, some spoke about the changes affecting the North Slope and Northwest Arctic regions — for example, an increased polar bear presence around some communities.

Kaktovik resident Carla SimsKayotuk said in the report that she sees many more bears around her village.

“There are over 60 polar bears around our area,” SimsKayotuk, also an observer with the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub, said in September.

As sea ice declines, more polar bears spend more time on land: Since the 1980s, the percentage of polar bears summering on shore increased from 5% to 30% in the Southern Beaufort Sea, and from 10% to 50% in the Chukchi Sea. Both populations spent about 30 days more on land.

“There’s been a continuous increase in the amount of time bears spend on land, and also what proportion comes on land in the summertime,” said U.S. Geological Survey research wildlife biologist Karyn Rode, who has been studying polar bears for several decades. “It is at least partly driven by the amount of sea ice available during the summer.”

Rode explained that when the ice retreats north, polar bears have a choice to stay with that ice and retreat toward the pole, farther away from the most productive ocean habitat, or to drop off and come on land.

“Bears that come on land have the benefit that there are bowhead whale carcasses from subsistence hunts, and the majority of bears that come on land will visit those,” she said.

Rode said by 2040, scientists forecast that about 50% of the Southern Beaufort Sea polar bear population would be coming on shore, increasing their time on land by another 40 days.

Now that polar bears are close to infrastructure more often, scientists wonder how they are responding to human-related disturbances. Todd Brinkman, associate professor at UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology, led a research project looking at the effects of aircraft on bears.

“Bears were responding more strongly to helicopter activity than aircraft,” he said.

Brinkman said that in normal conditions when aircraft can fly high, above 1,500 feet, it doesn’t significantly affect the bears, However, when conditions change, and there is a low ceiling, aircraft has to fly lower, and there’s a greater opportunity for a disturbance.

Brinkman is also leading a study that looks at how increasing ship traffic might affect bears.

Polar bears on land are closer to people, which can create opportunities for tourism but also for human-bear conflicts, the report said.

Rode said that so far, she is not aware of data suggesting more conflicts.

Brinkman said that researchers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management staff are discussing what studies can address direct interactions between humans and bears. He said that one example the research could follow is looking at the effectiveness of different deterrents or hazing techniques to pull a bear away from communities, but there are various ways to approach the question.

“The communities need to be part of this,” Brinkman said. “They need to really guide the research so whatever information we generate is useful to them, and it can help them make decisions.”

Unreliable ice makes travel more dangerous

The report highlighted the warming in the Northwest Arctic region and its effects on residents.

Specifically, Kotzebue resident and observer Bobby Schaeffer said in the report that the changing climate has led to more difficult and dangerous travel, and, as a result, postponed activities and altered hunting seasons.

According to the report, Kotzebue Sound has warmed 12 degrees since the 1980s, and freeze-up and break-up times have shifted.

Schaeffer said that when he was growing up in the ‘50s, he remembers having nine months of winter and three months of summer. Throughout his life, the climate has been changing.

“Rather than three months summers, we started having six months summers, early spring and late fall, about a month on each side,” he said.

This year, Kotzebue saw below-zero temperature for the first time on Nov. 26 — something that would happen in early September when Schaeffer was a child. It takes longer for temperatures to drop and for water to fully freeze.

With longer periods of open water, the region started getting more frequent and intense storms.

“People are getting more concerned about massive storms,” Schaeffer said. “We’ve never had those when I was growing up, but now they’re they’re more frequent, and they’re getting stronger.”

The ice around Kotzebue is affected too.

“It’s not getting thick anymore, and we are hunting closer and closer to land because that’s where the leads are now,” he said.

With slow freeze-up in the fall, hunters need to wait until they know the ice is thick enough before they can go out and try to hunt or fish, Schaeffer said. In spring, the snow disappears quickly, and the sun shines directly onto the ice, making it thin, especially around the channels where the current is the strongest and near shallow sandbar areas, he said.

“It doesn’t take very long for it to get dangerous,” he said. “People fall in both times, both fall and spring. ... People have lost their lives because of trying to traverse across the ice.”