polar bears

A “sleeping” polar bear waits for a walrus calf to come close.

Questions and answers, straight from Siberia.

Today, at more than 74.5 latitude, we experienced more Arctic wildlife than most people do in a lifetime.

In the middle of 400 walruses, on a small piece of ice, is the king — a fat male polar bear.

Mikhail wakes up just after midnight. The crew has spotted our first polar bear, and it’s a family group!

We have now all gathered in Moscow and are on our the way to Krasnoyarsk, where we will change flights to the Arctic.

There’s an electric fence in WWF’s Ottawa office, and a motion detector’s siren blares at the first unlucky staffer to walk through the kitchen.

When we were approached by a photographer, wondering if we wanted to comment on a dead polar bear that he thought had starved, we were torn.

Jon Aars is a researcher with the Norwegian Polar Institute, Norway’s main institution for research, environmental monitoring and mapping of the polar regions. With the support of WWF, Aars studies polar bear populations on the Norwegian island of Svalbard. Read all of  his field notes from a Spring 2013 research expedition, and follow the bears […]

Jon Aars is a researcher with the Norwegian Polar Institute, Norway’s main institution for research, environmental monitoring and mapping of the polar regions. With the support of WWF, Aars studies polar bear populations on the Norwegian island of Svalbard. Read all of  his field notes from a Spring 2013 research expedition, and follow the bears […]