Data from genetics, movements and observations show that this previously-undocumented population survives with limited access to sea ice — by hunting from freshwater ice that pours into the ocean from Greenland’s glaciers.

In East Greenland polar bears are distributed over the largest habitat of all the world´s polar bear populations. Previously polar bears in East Greenland were regarded as belonging to one population, ranging throughout the whole coast of East Greenland.

As part of an assessment to advise the Government of Greenland about management and conservation of polar bears, the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources (GINR) undertook the task to determine whether polar bears in East Greenland is subdivided into more than one population.

Prior to this study the southeastern parts of the East Greenland coast south of Tasiilaq, in particular, had been poorly studied because of its remoteness and challenging environmental conditions, including highly unpredictable weather, jagged mountains, fjords with little sea ice, and heavy snowfall.

During 2015-2022, GINR scientists and colleagues interviewed local hunters and surveyed all portions of the coast of East Greenland coast by tagging and biopsying polar bears, collecting information on biology, movements and genetics of bears from Prins Christiansund in the south as far Kap Morris Jessup in the north. This information was combined with data collected over 35 years during various studies of polar bears on East Greenland, and with hunter’s samples from the East Greenland subsistence harvest.

The study documented that polar bears in East Greenland belong to two populations and that the newly described population occurs in Southeast Greenland between 60-64 degrees N. Southeast Greenland polar bears are the most genetically distinct polar bears in the world. In fact, the genetic analyses show that this group of bears is more different from its nearest genetic neighbor than any of the 19 previously known polar bear populations.

Satellite tracking of adult females between 2015-2022 shows that, unlike most other polar bears that travel far over sea ice to hunt, Southeast Greenland bears stay close to their homes. They walk on ice inside protected fjords or up mountains to reach neighboring fjords. Half of the bears that were tracked, accidentally drifted more than 200 kilometers south on sea ice floes when caught in the rapid East Greenland current, but then hopped off and walked back north to their home fjord on land on the inland ice cap.

The Government of Greenland will decide on any management measures of the new findings. Currently there is a subsistence hunt regulated by quotas to be taken by licensed local hunters. The quota of 2022 was of 69 polar bears in East Greenland, allocated to three regions: Ittoqqortoormiit in central East Greenland, Tasiilaq in SE Greenland, and Southwest Greenland, where polar bears are transported by sea ice drifting from East Greenland.