This week is Polar Bear Week - a great way to celebrate this iconic, magnificent, and unfortunately threatened species. Prior to my current job as the President of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, I served as the Alaska Regional Director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As part of that job, I was appointed by both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the United States Polar Bear Commissioner.

The Polar Bear Commission does tremendous international work to protect polar bears in the Chukchi Sea and the northern Bering Sea, and is considered to be a landmark in cooperative wildlife management between governmental and Native representatives of the U.S. and Russia.

*Geoff Haskett with polar bear cub tranquilized for a population survey and biological testing*

I have had the great fortune of doing polar bear work for many years and know first hand how important the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and its coastal plain is for the protection of polar bears. Polar bears den on land and the Arctic Refuge is the largest contiguous protected area with polar bear denning in North America and has the highest density of polar bear dens on Alaska’s coast. Disrupting this habitat would greatly impact these animals, which are already highly threatened by climate change.

With climate change threatening to push polar bears to extinction, we need to focus on protecting habitat and food sources. Congress is starting to talk about this aspect of conservation as well. Last week, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) proposed an amendment to the Interior Appropriations FY2020 Spending Bill that would have prohibited the use of appropriated dollars for permitting incidental take of the bear for oil and gas exploration on the Refuge. This proposal was not adopted but we want to thank the Senator for this and his efforts to protect polar bears and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge!

Written by the Refuge Association’s President Geoff Haskett