10.2.1 Industry Best Practices for Polar Bear Management in Alaska

Presentation Title: Cooperation and Industry Best Practices for Successful Polar Bear Management on
Alaska’s North Slope
Summary: The Alaska oil and gas industry’s polar bear interaction and protection programs provide an extraordinary set of best management practices based on decades of real-world experience, as well as cutting edge efforts to utilize new technologies to protect bears and people and minimize human-bear conflict. To help inform the Range State Delegates, BP Alaska will provide a summary of the management practices implemented by industry under their polar bear interaction plans and the regulatory measures implemented under the Marine Mammal Protection Act incidental take programs. The summary will include the evolution and improvements from documented human-bear conflict in the 1990s through present, where the Alaska North Slope oil and gas fields now represent the gold standard in human-bear conflict minimization. This successful co-habitation of Alaska’s North Slope is largely accomplished through a cooperative process including industry petitions for polar bear incidental take regulations (and subsequent required mitigation measures), continuous improvement in industry polar bear interaction and management programs, cooperation and transparent communications with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, advances in direct take (deterrence) programs, and industry response to increasing numbers of polar bears and maternal dens in on-shore industry areas. BP Alaska will review the success of polar bear interaction plans, industry workforce training and engagement programs, pooling of industry resources for den detection surveys, and oil spill response. We’ll highlight our program for cooperation with local communities and subsistence users, and coordination with various third-party groups (Universities, non-profits, and veterinarian and zoo resources) for continuous improvement on various aspects of oil spill preparedness, den response in industrial areas, and human-bear conflict minimization.