National Geographic Young Explorer and wildlife photographer Nansen Weber has been going to the same party for 16 years and it never gets old. Each summer for about a month, thousands of beluga whales congregate in Cunningham Inlet, a part of ...
By Kitson Jazynka In honor of International Polar Bear Day, National Geographic spoke with Steven Amstrup, who has been studying polar bears in the wild for 35 years. “I couldn’t imagine a more interesting or captivating species to study—giant ...
My organization Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation has teamed up with fellow National Geographic adventurer Mike Libecki on two new projects. A world-class climber, Mike collected samples for the ASC Scat project and documented polar bear sightings for a ...
Thirty years of traversing bone-chilling landscapes littered with hidden crevasses just isn’t enough for renowned polar explorer Børge Ousland, who is now attempting to cross the world’s 20 largest glaciers on the Ice Legacy expedition. Yet there is ...
By Xander Zellner for National Geographic Polar Bear Watch A recent study found that greenhouse gas emissions remain the number one threat posed to polar bears. The study, released on June 30 by the U.S. Geological Survey, predicts a decline ...
On June 4, 1773, English naval officers were dispatched on an expedition to the Arctic. Their goal was to locate a passage from the British Isles to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, on ice floes near Spitsbergen (Svalbard), Norway, they found polar bears. ...
Despite Arctic marine mammals being icons of climate change, little is known about their populations across the Arctic. In a first ever global review of Arctic marine mammals, published last week in Conservation Biology, an international team of scientists provides ...
By Emily Shenk National Geographic Imagine you’ve drawn a line across a jigsaw puzzle, and you’re following that line from beginning to end. Suddenly the puzzle breaks apart and the pieces move in different directions. How do you ...
By Laurie McClellan for National Geographic, Polar Bear Watch It’s one of the most elusive superstars of the northern wilderness: the wolverine. Nicknamed “the devil bear” for its fierce disposition, the wolverine is known to hunt moose and ...
Seals swim in a cold blue abyss. White paws paddle through the icy water, giving chase. Finally, morsels of frozen, skinned seal float into view as the hunter gnaws down on her meal. It’s the first glimpse of life ...
By Peter Mather For National Geographic Polar Bear Watch Early morning light illuminates the sky for a young grizzly bear (at left) as he wades into the Fishing Branch River in search of his next meal. Bear Cave Mountain, which ...
Warning: If you can’t handle extreme cuteness, you may want to look away. Twin baby polar bears at the Hellabrunn Zoo in Munich, Germany, have opened their eyes for the first time. The twin cubs, just five weeks old, ...
By Paul Nicklen with Cristina Mittermeier It had been a long time since I had any feeling in my feet or hands as I sat on the sea ice in Svalbard, Norway, at minus 22°F. I wanted to jump around, ...
By Emily Shenk A recent study found that the condition of polar bears in the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea has remained stable despite sea ice loss, while the condition of another population in the Beaufort Sea has declined. The ...
By Susan McGrath for National Geographic Polar Bear Watch In Barrow, on the northern coast of Alaska, the sun sets at five o’clock on October 31, and the temperature typically drops into the single digits. This doesn’t faze ...