Specialists from the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the Russian Academy of Sciences and from the Russian Arctic National Park are holding a joint expedition on Alexandra Land Island. A group of biologists continues to monitor polar bears from the Kara Sea - Barents Sea population at a time when female bears and cubs start leaving their ‘maternity’ dens.

Polar bears roam Alexandra Land all year round, also giving birth to cubs in the area. Pregnant female polar bears dig up their dens on coastal slopes in late autumn and leave them with their offspring in April.  This is the best time to conduct surveys of the polar bear population and to study the animals, said Deputy Director for Research at the Russian Arctic Ivan Mizin, an expedition member.

“Franz Josef Land is a famous polar bear ‘maternity hospital’ where female bears hunt for seals on fast shore ice,” he noted.

The area of sea-ice formations, the main polar bear habitat, has been dwindling considerably over the past few years. Therefore polar bears are having trouble hunting for ringed seals, their traditional source of food, and they are forced to find alternative food sources during the ice-free period.

The Russian Geographical Society is constantly expanding the scale of its polar bear research programmes. In 2010, a programme to study polar bears was launched in the Franz Josef Land Archipelago, followed by a programme in the northern section of the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago in 2011, Taimyr in 2012 and Yamal in 2015-2016.

According to Ivan Mizin, one of the main tasks of the current season is the fastening of satellite-tracked GPS collars around the necks of the polar bears; this facilitates the study of the seasonal migration routes of family groups with cubs of various ages.

“So far, we have tagged two female bears with satellite-tracked GPS collars. In all, we have caught five polar bears. We took blood, wool and faeces samples to study the diet and health of individual animals as well as of the entire sub-population,” the scientist added.

Expedition members also prioritise efforts to study various trends when female polar bears dig out their “maternity” dens in connection with the ongoing climate change and increasingly greater anthropogenic impact during the intensive development of Arctic territories, including Franz Josef Land.