WWF-UK

ARCTIC PROGRAM 2019-2020

Arcticus works in collaboration with Work For Good to provide direct donations to the WWF-UK Arctic Programmes.

The WWF has worked for over a decade to protect the Arctic. They have been able to play a leading role in the international IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. The report featured important findings from krill and climate research, and highlighted the implications for biodiversity loss. The report also demonstrated that the world's oceans and ice-covered areas have been taking the heat for decades, concluding with a very strong paragraph that there is a need for coordinated and transformative efforts to mitigate the effects of temperature rise and the urgency for sustainable development.

WWF-UK is also further supporting projects in three areas of polar bear conservation.

Funds support long-term monitoring of two polar bear subpopulations that are amongst the most affected by climate change due to sea ice loss (Svalbard) and southern geographic location (Western Hudson Bay, Canada). The two programs monitor habitat use, female reproductive success, cub survival and body condition – The WWF is following the bears’ travel in the Arctic through using radio collars that send signals via satellite. The data is available on WWF’s polar bear tracker https://arcticwwf.org/species/polar-bear/tracker/, and provides valuable insights into understanding the movements of the bears, particularly in relation to sea ice.

Funds also support human-polar bear conflict management through patrols on the ground in Russia, Greenland and Canada and the development of an open source early warning system to detect and deter polar bears around communities. In December 2019 more than 60 polar bears gathered near a village in Chukotka, Russia looking for food. The village was monitored throughout this incident by the Polar Bear Patrol in Russia, stopping bears from entering the village.

Finally, WWF-UK funds support an exciting initiative to isolate polar bear DNA from footprints in the snow. This project will advance the understanding of human-polar bear conflict through profiling problem bears in communities. A total of 51 snow samples were analysed during 2019, and first results indicate that it is presumably possible to genetically “fingerprint” individual polar bears.