Called pisugtooq, the great wanderer, by the polar Eskimos of NW Greenland, the polar bear has no territory but instead a vast range through which it wanders tirelessly. This behavior is necessitated by the shifting sea ice and changing ocean productivity on which is depends, but it has developed into an animal with seemingly no limits as to where it is willing to go.
Nobody really knows what drives this seemingly deliberate and intent ceaseless travel, how they know where they are or how they know where they are going. A bear in Svalbard may wonder within a few hundred square kilometres for several months before walking to Franz Josef Land and then halfway to the North Pole, covering thousands of miles. Bears have been seen in such unlikely spots as the summit of Mt Newton in Svalbard (an altitude of 6600ft!) or 30 miles inland on the Greenland ice cap and we have no real idea what they are doing there, though we may speculate. The females of the Alaskan population den on shifting sea ice and emerge from their dens a significant distance from where they dug in months before. Despite this, they converge on their traditional feeding areas with unerring and uncanny accuracy no matter where they start.
The bear pictured here was encountered on sea ice within a mile of the island of Storoya in the east of the Svalbard archipelago. Fearlessly curious as to what we were, it quickly resumed its travel westward when we slowly retreated.
Like every sighting, this bear was full of mystery. Where did it come from? Where is it going with such intent? And with this mystery comes an admiration for an animal so incredibly at home in its environment, able to cover the difficult and shifting terrain with ease and comfort. Its motion is assured, almost leisurely and proprietorial; early whalers apparently nicknamed it ‘the farmer’ because of its easy stride.
This isn’t an animal that’s surviving; it’s a robust and resourceful creature ‘choosing’ to remain, and roam endlessly, in the environment in which it feels most at home.
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