Establish baseline for bear injuries and deaths using existing data from 2020

Summary of the Action:
The Range States intend to report the number of polar bears killed and injured in human-bear conflict situations over time. Action HBC-A3 will develop a baseline number of bears killed and injured. Annual reporting of this metric will then be carried out under action HBC-A5 so that the Range States can track trends over time.

Action Lead:
Lindsey Mangipane (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
 

Participants:
Sub-group members:

Karen Lone (Norway)
Jesper Ødegård Jacobsen (Greenland)
Sam Iverson (Canada)
Lindsey Mangipane (U.S.A)
Alexander Gruzdev (Russia)
 

Duration of action:
June 2020- April 2021
 

Deliverables (output):

• A baseline number of polar bears that were injured or killed by humans in conflict situations in 2020.
• Definitions of “bears killed in conflict situations” and “bears injured in conflict situations”
• A graphic representation of the data that can be displayed on the PBRS website
  
  

 Impact (outcome):
Although a baseline from before the CAP was implemented in 2015 would be the most informative metric for gauging progress, conflict data was not collected in a consistent way among the Range States in the past. In some jurisdictions, conflict bears are legally removed through subsistence harvest, and are therefore reported as harvest rather than conflict removals. This distinction has not been consistently documented in the past, and efforts are currently underway in some jurisdictions to improve reporting. Therefore, to accurately measure progress towards reducing conflict related mortality in the future, we hope to acknowledge the above-mentioned inconsistencies and establish a baseline using 2020 data. The 2020 baseline can then be used to gauge progress toward meeting Objective 5: Manage human-bear interactions to ensure human safety and to minimize polar bear injury or mortality.

Dissemination:
The baseline can be displayed on the Range State website alongside the data from HBC-A4 (Establish baseline for human injuries and deaths using existing data from 2006-2015). In subsequent years, HBC-A5 (Report findings on human-bear conflicts which end in injury or death [to bears or humans] annually on the Range States website for each country or subpopulation) will be reported in a format similar to what was reported for baselines.