The large marine ecosystem approach to assessment and management of polar bears during climate change

As an apex predator dependent on sea ice as habitat for catching prey, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are threatened in terms of survival rates due to the loss of sea ice in relation to climate change. Current management plans have made modest progress in providing adequate assessment and management of the 19 polar bear subpopulations in the five nations containing the subpopulations: Canada, Russia, Greenland, Norway, and the USA. Polar bears are distributed across Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs) where changes in ice cover are affecting their survival. This paper describes the utility of a transboundary ecosystem-based adaptive management approach to sustain polar bear subpopulations during climate change. The LME framework provides a means to measure change in five modules (productivity, fish and fisheries and marine mammals, pollution and ecosystem health, socioeconomics, and governance) and assess changes in environmental conditions to initiate conservation and recovery. In particular, this paper demonstrates that the LME approach can provide a means of diagnostic analyses and strategic planning for transboundary polar bear conservation in Arctic LMEs during climate change.