Polar bears live across the Arctic regions of five countries: Canada, the United States (Alaska), Russia, Norway, and Greenland (a territory of Denmark). Their range spans the entire circumpolar Arctic, from the frozen archipelagos of northern Canada to the remote Russian islands of the Chukchi Sea. Rather than roaming the Arctic randomly, they concentrate in 19 recognized subpopulations, each tied to specific stretches of coastline and sea ice.
The Five Polar Bear Nations
Canada is by far the most important country for polar bears. Thirteen of the 19 recognized subpopulations fall partially or wholly within Canadian territory, stretching from Hudson Bay in the south through the vast Arctic archipelago in the north. The United States holds a share of two subpopulations along the Alaskan coast, primarily in the Southern Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea regions. Russia’s Arctic coastline and island chains support several populations, with Wrangel Island serving as one of the most critical denning sites in the world. A pilot study using satellite imagery estimated between 290 and 331 polar bears on Wrangel Island during a single August survey.
Norway’s polar bear population centers on the Svalbard archipelago, high in the Barents Sea. The total Barents Sea population was estimated at between 1,900 and 3,600 bears in 2004, and may have increased since then based on higher counts at the ice edge in 2015. Greenland hosts bears along its entire eastern coastline and shares several subpopulations with Canada along its western side, including the Baffin Bay and Kane Basin groups.
How 19 Subpopulations Divide the Arctic
Scientists organize the world’s polar bears into 19 distinct subpopulations, each named for a geographic feature. In the Canadian Arctic alone, these include Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, Lancaster Sound, the Gulf of Boothia, M’Clintock Channel, and several others scattered among the islands and waterways of the far north. The Baffin Bay subpopulation is bounded by Greenland to the east and Baffin Island to the west. The Kane Basin group occupies a narrow corridor between Greenland and Ellesmere Island.
Along the Russian coast, the Laptev Sea subpopulation covers the western half of the East Siberian Sea and includes the remote Novosibirsk Islands. The Kara Sea group takes in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago and overlaps with the Barents Sea population near Franz Josef Land. At the top of the world, the Arctic Basin subpopulation is a catch-all designation for bears found in the most northern reaches of the Arctic that don’t clearly belong to any other group.
The boundaries between these subpopulations aren’t fences. They’re based on decades of tracking data, genetic studies, and observed movement patterns. Some overlap exists, particularly in areas like the Barents and Kara seas.
Why Sea Ice Dictates Their Location
Polar bears are tied to sea ice for nearly every part of their life cycle: hunting, traveling, mating, and in some cases denning. They prefer areas where ice concentration exceeds 80% and where different types of ice meet, creating edges and cracks. These edges matter because ringed seals, their primary prey, are easier to catch where ice breaks up and reforms. Shallow water areas are especially attractive, likely because the waters beneath are more biologically productive and support more prey.
This dependence on ice means polar bears aren’t evenly spread across the Arctic. They cluster along coastlines and continental shelves where seasonal ice forms reliably, rather than deep in the central Arctic Ocean where prey is scarce.
Where They Go When Ice Melts
Polar bear populations handle the summer melt season in two fundamentally different ways, depending on where they live. In regions where sea ice disappears entirely during summer, bears migrate onto land and wait, sometimes for months, until the ice returns in fall. This is what happens in Hudson Bay, where bears spend the warm months fasting on shore.
In regions where ice historically persisted year-round, bears simply followed the retreating ice edge northward, staying on the pack ice through summer. But this strategy is changing. In Alaska, the progressive decline in summer sea ice over the continental shelf has led to a growing trend of bears coming ashore, a behavior that was uncommon just a few decades ago. In the Southern Beaufort Sea, most polar bears once built their maternity dens on sea ice. Over the last three decades, as that ice has become thinner and more prone to breaking apart, denning has shifted increasingly to land.
In the Barents Sea near Svalbard, researchers have identified two distinct behavioral types. “Local” bears stay in the Svalbard area year-round. “Pelagic” bears follow the retreating ice edge in spring, migrating hundreds of kilometers between Svalbard and the Russian archipelago of Franz Josef Land or northeast toward the open ice edge. The Barents Sea has lost ice habitat at a rate of four days per year between 1979 and 2014, more than twice as fast as any other polar bear region.
Their Surprising Southern Limit
Most people picture polar bears in the high Arctic, but the southernmost year-round population lives in James Bay, Canada, where bears den on Akimiski Island at roughly 53°N latitude. That’s about the same latitude as Manchester, England, or Edmonton, Alberta. On a seasonal basis, some bears appear regularly as far south as Newfoundland, and in years with unusually heavy pack ice, they’ve been spotted in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near 50°N.
Where to See Polar Bears in the Wild
Churchill, Manitoba, on the southwestern shore of Hudson Bay, is the most accessible place in the world to see wild polar bears. From July through November, roughly a thousand bears migrate to the Churchill area, earning the town its nickname as the “polar bear capital of the world.” The bears spend summer on land and gather along the coast waiting for Hudson Bay to freeze so they can return to hunting seals on the ice. Peak viewing season runs from mid-October to late November, when bears concentrate along the shoreline. No paved roads lead into Churchill, so visitors arrive by train or plane.
Svalbard, Norway, is another well-known destination for polar bear sightings, typically accessed by expedition cruise ships that navigate the archipelago’s fjords and ice edges during summer months. In Alaska, bears can occasionally be spotted near the village of Kaktovik on Baffin Island during fall, when they gather along the coast of the Beaufort Sea. Wrangel Island in Russia, while difficult to reach, supports one of the densest concentrations of bears during late summer, with researchers estimating densities of up to 18 bears per 100 square kilometers in some areas.