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Polar bear · A marine bear whose seal-and-ice budget made Churchill, Knut and climate models into one public animal.

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Quick answers

Why is resilience low if some subpopulations look stable?

IUCN VU and the 2008 ESA listing rest on ice-season length. A few stable stocks do not cancel a circumpolar ice forecast. High resilience in this atlas means secure (koi, many owls), not famous.

What did the 2008 US listing change?

It treated greenhouse gases as a listed-species threat. Courts later limited how far that could reach power plants; the biological finding stayed.

Is Churchill typical?

Western Hudson Bay is an early-ice-loss stock and a tourist town. It is a visible subpopulation, not the whole Arctic.

Who was Knut?

A hand-reared Berlin cub (2006-2011) whose fame and death made zoo ethics a tabloid. He is culture, not a sea-ice time series.

Do polar bears eat only seals?

Seals (especially ringed) are the fat that pays. Bird eggs, carrion and land food appear more in long ice-free summers -- a budget problem, not a new niche that replaces ice.

What is Nanook of the North to this file?

The 1922 film staged Inuit life for a southern camera. It is a portrayal, not an ethnography of nanuq knowledge.

IUCN: Vulnerable

Money around the polar bear is regional even when the brand is global.

Figures are dated educational bands -- not live quotes and not a buying guide.

Encounter bands

Viewing / tourism (2010s band)

Ticketed

Safari, hide, cage-dive or parade tickets in the 2010s often sat in the tens to hundreds of USD per person -- a dated band, not a live quote.

Conflict / livestock loss

Local & episodic

Predation and crop-raid compensation schemes (US, Kenya, India) published per-head bands that changed with election cycles.

Fishery / take value

Commodity

Where the type is a catch (tuna, salmon, fugu), 2000s-2020s ex-vessel or auction bands were the political number -- not a supermarket tag.

Captive / zoo husbandry

Institutional

Annual keep for a large mammal or a specialist bird in AZA/EAZA reports ran to five or six figures USD in the 2010s.

Enforcement / reserve ops

Public

Ranger, observer and census costs are socialised; they do not appear on a viewing ticket.

Regions

North America

ESA listings, Parks Canada, Alaska runs and Churchill buggies are the English-language field the localLens keeps returning to.

United Kingdom and Ireland

RSPB, NatureScot, reintroductions and a dense NGO press shape how this atlas type is taught in British English.

European Union / wider Europe

Habitats Directive, IWC delegations and returning wolves sit beside UK practice without being identical.

Range-state core

The biological centre of the polar bear -- often not English-speaking -- still writes the Red List.

Australia and New Zealand

DOC, Phillip Island, Taiaroa Head and kakapo-style ICU projects are the southern English conservation dialect.

Global trade desks

CITES, ICCAT, IWC and auction houses price the animal whether or not a local language has a word for it.

Key range numbers

54Atlas speed
21Atlas resilience
67Atlas cultural impact
67Atlas ecological role

Field programmes

IUCN PBSG

Subpopulation assessments.

USGS / US FWS

ESA 2008 science and listing.

Polar Bears International

Churchill cameras and outreach.

Government of Nunavut / Inuit orgs

Nanuq knowledge and harvest co-management.

Manitoba / Churchill operators

Tourism that funds and stresses a stock.

Norwegian Polar Institute

Svalbard research.

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