A fresh look at WWF’s Wildlife Tracker

Polar bears face unprecedented challenges as the climate crisis transforms their Arctic home. With sea ice melting earlier in the year and forming later in the season, polar bear monitoring helps researchers understand how they respond to these changes. This is where WWF’s Wildlife Tracker comes in.

The tracker, which has been a valuable tool for showing polar bear movements for over 10 years, has now been relaunched with a modern design. The updated version is more user-friendly, mobile-friendly, and visually engaging, allowing readers to view the movements of individual polar bears as they adjust to their shifting habitat. While the tracker visualizes movement patterns, scientists use the underlying data for deeper analysis. They study long-term trends and assess how climate change affects polar bear behaviours and habitats.

How the Tracker Works

The WWF Wildlife Tracker shows the locations of individual polar bears that have been fitted with tracking devices (GPS loggers attached to collars) by researchers. As long as the GPS tracker is fitted to the polar bear, geographic locations are obtained regularly via satellite. This data allows researchers to map out movement patterns, identify key denning areas, and monitor how polar bears respond to environmental changes.

The tracker currently shows data from two key Arctic regions: Svalbard and the Barents Sea, monitored by the Norwegian Polar Institute, and Western Hudson Bay, Canada, where researchers from the University of Alberta and Environment and Climate Change Canada have been studying polar bears for several decades. By observing how bears from different regions live, researchers can better understand climate change impacts across the Arctic. Such information can be used to identify areas where conservation efforts are most needed.

Since WWF first launched its Wildlife Tracker tracker 2013, data from 68 individual bears has been displayed. At any given time,  the tracker will follow approximately 10 bears—five in Western Hudson Bay and five in Svalbard—depending on data availability.

This latest relaunch brings improvements beyond design and usability. In addition to tracking polar bear movements, the tracker now includes sea ice data, which provides essential context on how sea ice, which is essential habitat for polar bears, is changing across the Arctic. Sea ice data is updated monthly, while polar bear locations are refreshed twice a month.

Why tracking polar bears matters for conservation

Tracking polar bears is about more than mapping their movements. It’s about understanding how climate change affects their survival. By analyzing tracking data, scientists can see how polar bears are adapting—or struggling—in an Arctic that is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet. This information helps answer critical questions: Are polar bears traveling longer distances to find food? Are they spending more time on land due to shrinking ice? Are certain subpopulations worse off than others?

The answers to these questions drive WWF’s efforts to push governments for meaningful action. Ensuring healthy polar bear populations requires protecting their habitats, and tracking data helps pinpoint the most critical areas to preserve.

The climate crisis: The biggest threat to polar bears

There is no question that climate change is the greatest threat to the long term survival of polar bears. The Arctic is warming at an alarming rate. As sea ice declines, so does the polar bear’s ability to hunt, reproduce, and survive.

In some areas, the effects of warming are already devastating. In Western Hudson Bay, in northeastern Manitoba, Canada, polar bears rely on sea ice to hunt seals. However, because the ice is now melting earlier and forming later each year, they are spending more time on land, fasting for longer periods. With less time to build up fat reserves, their overall body condition is declining, cub survival rates are dropping, and the population is shrinking.

Meanwhile, on Svalbard, a Norwegian Arctic archipelago in the Barents Sea, north of mainland Norway, polar bears swim longer distances than previously, and have been observed hunting reindeer and consuming seabird eggs more frequently. While they are currently coping, long-term survival depends on seasonal access to sea ice for seal hunting.

If current warming trends continue, scientists predict that we could lose one third of the world’s polar bears by 2050, with local extinctions in some parts of the Arctic likely before the end of the century.

What needs to be done to protect polar bears?

While tracking technology provides valuable insights, ensuring the future of polar bears requires immediate, large-scale climate action. The biggest threat to their survival is climate change, which drives Arctic warming and sea ice loss.

WWF is calling for a dramatic course correction from Arctic governments to reset their climate policies in line with limiting global warming to 1.5°C. We need to rapidly and completely phase out fossil fuel production and consumption and transition to 100 per cent renewable energy. Without this shift, polar bears—and the Arctic ecosystem as a whole—will continue to decline at an alarming rate.

Additionally, it means strengthening international cooperation to ensure polar bear habitats are protected by Arctic nations. Habitats include those that are used by polar bears now, as well as those identified as future climate refuges for polar bears and other sea-ice-dependent species, such as the Last Ice Area. Indigenous knowledge and leadership are also essential as Arctic Indigenous communities have expertise and understanding of polar bears as part of marine ecosystems, harvest management, coexistence with polar bears, and habitat monitoring, invaluable to the development of sound management practices.

Another growing challenge is human-wildlife conflict, as more polar bears spend time near Arctic communities due to shrinking ice. Management strategies must protect both polar bears and the people who share their environment by addressing key challenges, including strengthening Arctic knowledge on managing attractants like open landfills and organic waste.

Time is running out. Governments must also commit to protecting Arctic biodiversity, recognizing that fighting climate change and halting nature loss must go hand in hand. Winning the battle against climate change depends on taking a holistic approach that preserves critical ecosystems, strengthens adaptation efforts, and builds resilience for both nature and people.

Explore the Wildlife Tracker