Life As a Polar Bear Isn't All Misery and Starvation...

While the number of polar bears is decreasing elsewhere, the population is growing on Svalbard. The most recent count on the Norwegian islands in the Barents Sea estimated a population of 975 individuals, which is 300 more than in the 2004 count. The females give birth in caves during the winter and cubs emerge for the first time on the sea ice, when they are two to three months old. The amount of sea ice varies considerably from year to year, but the long-term trend is for the ice to cover a smaller part of the Arctic, which will also affect the polar bears on Svalbard.