The current state of the polar bear population and its distribution in the Arctic is an issue that has been of concern to the specialists studying this region for decades. The polar bear is the largest representative of the family Ursidae and the order Carnivora. This bear is protected by the Russian and International Red Data Book. It is the top of the food chain in its habitat and an important indicator of the entire Arctic ecosystem.
Today the world, especially the circumpolar countries, Canada, the US, Norway and Denmark, is drawn to polar bears. In the 1970s, Russia counted these predators every year, but in recent decades only expert estimates of the state of the polar bear population have been published based mostly on lair count: how many lairs, where they are and how many cubs. However, it is impossible to see the full picture with this method.
"We have to know how many bears there are in different parts of the Arctic to see which processes the population is undergoing, how far the bears migrate, the structure of various groups, and the threats the bears are exposed to considering human activity and environmental processes. We need to create this kind of comprehensive monitoring," noted academician Vyacheslav Rozhnov, director of the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the Russian Academy of Sciences.