Nearly all of Alaska’s polar bear records come from the North Slope, the state’s Arctic coastal plain along the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, with a smaller cluster around the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal strip. That’s exactly where the species’ real habitat sits: pack ice forming close enough to shore for a bear to hunt seals from it, not the open tundra farther inland.
Pregnant females den in snowdrifts and frozen banks along this same coastal strip each winter, including inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the most important onshore denning areas for the whole Beaufort Sea population. Cubs stay in the den through the coldest months while their mother lives entirely off stored fat, then follow her onto the sea ice once they’re strong enough to travel.
Records here peak sharply in June, when retreating summer ice pushes bears closer to the North Slope coast and puts them within reach of researchers and coastal communities. Reports thin out again once the pack ice reforms and bears move back out onto it, farther from where anyone is watching.
Alaska’s polar bears are increasingly documented spending more time on land near coastal settlements as the sea ice they depend on breaks up earlier each spring, a shift that’s changing how people and bears share the same stretch of North Slope coastline.
Full species profile
