Reuters <https://nationalpost.com/author/reutersnp>

Yereth Rosen

February 27, 2020

ANCHORAGE – The oil industry’s system for locating polar bear dens in the
snowdrifts of Alaska’s North Slope failed more than half the time over a
12-year period, according to a study published on Thursday. [scroll down]

Risks to polar bears are among the concerns about expanded North Slope oil
development, especially in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. State
officials have been pushing to boost oil and gas production in Alaska after
the Trump administration in 2017 passed legislation opening ANWR for
drilling.

The study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, evaluated the oil
industry’s thermal-detection records compiled from 2004 to 2016. It compared
those records with biologists’ on-the-ground records of sites where mother
bears bedded down with newborn cubs during those same years.

The industry’s use of forward-looking infrared imagery (FLIR) located only
45% of the 33 polar bear…