Wildlife

Science

The Polar Bears Nobody Counted

There are probably more polar bears alive today than in the 1960s. But the 1960s figure was a guess, any rise came from curbs on hunting rather than from the climate, and for nearly half the world's subpopulations there is no usable trend at all.

By Raphael Bauer October 6, 2026 22 min read

The polar bear has a public relations problem in both directions. For two decades it has been the face of the melting Arctic, thin and stranded on a shrinking floe. For almost as long there has been a counter-claim: polar bear numbers have …