Positive news on the Arctic front as far as polar bears are concerned so far this year, with no reports of dead or dying bears, or of horrific attacks on humans that I’ve heard about. Not much to talk about, but here’s what I’ve found. [emphasis, links added]
Hudson Bay sea ice is forming rapidly, while according to NSIDC, the Arctic Basin is filled with ice.
Ice has also moved well into the Bering Sea, the Barents and Kara Seas, and the Davis Strait. NSIDC says it has discontinued its monthly sea ice reports due to a lack of funding.
However, under the current federal government administration, such budget cuts were likely tied to their inability to consistently produce these reports without pushing a human-caused climate change narrative of impending catastrophe.
We’ve heard nothing at all from the town of Churchill this year about how their polar bear season went: they have not posted a single problem bear report on their website for the first time in years.
Too busy to bother with keeping people informed for their safety, or so few issues that it would be embarrassing to report?
Literally the only mention I found of how Western Hudson Bay polar bears are doing relative to sea ice formation this fall came from a Facebook post by a tour company on 30 November 2025:
The photo of a cub mentioned in the post was this one:
In Norway, biologists in charge of monitoring polar bear health finally updated their webpage at the end of September 2025, where they stated [my bold]:
“The population probably increased considerably during the years after hunting was banned in 1973, and new knowledge indicates that the population has not been reduced in the last 10-15 years, in spite of a large reduction in available sea ice in the same period.“
Below is the data they provided on body condition (i.e., fatness) for adult males from 1993 to 2025. For some reason, [this dataset excludes adult females, even though data collection for females is known], as explained here (with references).
Perhaps it’s because, rather than showing no trend, the trend in female fatness increased, which is why the population prognosis is positive.
Over in the Chukchi Sea, a similar admission that bears are doing well despite summer sea ice declines came from a paper published in 2024 by Karyn Rode and colleagues [my highlights], pdf here, “Identifying indicators of polar bear population status”:
Top image by anvel from Pixabay
Susan Crockford, Ph.D., is a zoologist (former adjunct professor at the University of Victoria) specializing in Holocene mammals, including polar bears and walruses. Her latest novel is the thriller Don’t Run, and the nonfiction book Polar Bear Evolution: A Model for How New Species Arise.
Read more at Polar Bear Science
