Scientists have reported some rare good news from the Arctic. As the climate changes and the ice melts, in one region at least, polar bears are thriving—finding new ways to survive and packing on the pounds.
“A fat bear is a healthy bear,” Jon Aars, chief scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute, told CBS News on Thursday.
He has been tracking polar bears in the remote, arctic Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard for over 20 years. Between 1992 and 2019, he led a team of researchers who meticulously tracked the weight and size of nearly 800 bears.
They found that the polar giants were in good shape to survive and continue to breed new cubs.
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“I was quite surprised,” Aars admitted, “because we’ve lost so much sea ice since I started.”
For years scientists have raised the alarm that shrinking sea ice cover could endanger polar bears, who use the ice as a hunting platform for seals.
“We would predict that some of us should be in trouble,” Aars said.
But what his team found suggests that the bears are adapting to smaller patches of ice, which may also help them hunt more efficiently, as prey, which relies on the ice, is concentrated in smaller areas.
“I think what this shows is that they need less sea ice than we thought,” Aars told CBS News.
His team’s research also found that the melting ice is driving polar bears to get creative on land, where they are increasingly eating other prey such as reindeer and walrus.
“Some of them would now be on the ground 90% of the time, which is a lot,” he said.
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While the thriving bears are undeniably good news, Aars stressed that more research is needed to understand how polar bears elsewhere in the Arctic are adapting to a warming climate. And he cautions that his team’s research does not attempt to predict how animals will cope with the continued warming of the Arctic.
“The bears are still capable of dealing with the situation as it is today,” he said. “The bad news is that the predictions (are) that we will rapidly lose sea ice in Svalbard.”
Aars and many other scientists remain concerned that the Svalbard bear’s gains will be temporary and could be reversed.