Scientists in northern Alaska are learning about polar bears by scraping snow samples from the tracks they leave behind and using DNA to identify individual animals, says science writer Ned Rozell.
Polar bears hunt on the sea ice north of Utqiaġvik, the farthest-north community in the United States.
Lisette Waits of the University of Idaho was in Fairbanks recently at a conference to talk about a wildlife-sampling method that does not include a helicopter, dart gun or handling of a drugged polar bear that can weigh as much as four NFL linemen. Polar bears of the northern sea ice number from about 20,000 to 30,000 animals, with the waters and shorelines of northern and western Alaska supporting an unknown number. Scientists have identified two populations of polar bears in Alaska: a Chukchi Sea group that also expands to Russia, and Beaufort Sea animals that extend into northern Canada.
For the past several years, a team led by Andy Von Duyke of the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management in Utqiaġvik that includes biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has experimented with using sterilized trowels to scrape a thin layer of snow from fresh polar bear footprints.
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