Oil industry's polar bear detection method fails often: study

The oil industry'ssystem for locating polar bear dens in the snowdrifts ofAlaska's North Slope failed more than half the time over a12-year period, according to a study published on Thursday.

Risks to polar bears are among the concerns about expandedNorth Slope oil development, especially in the Arctic NationalWildlife Refuge (ANWR). State officials have been pushing to boost oiland gas production in Alaska after the Trump administration in2017 passed legislation opening ANWR for drilling.

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

The industry's use of forward-looking infrared imagery(FLIR) located only 45 per centof the 33 polar bear dens in the studyarea, a 224 kilometrestretch of Beaufort Sea coastlineextending east and west of Prudhoe Bay, the research found.

FLIR studies are conducted by aircraft and are useful forfinding the body heat produced by burrowing polar bears, butthey have limitations, said Tom Smith, a professor at BrighamYoung University and the lead author of the study, depending onhigh winds and how deep bears dig their dens into snowdrifts.

As sea ice retreats, bears are spending more time on land.The refuge's coastal plain has become a well-used area formother bears to build dens to give birth to and nurse theircubs.

Smith said the warming climate is also causing winds andatmospheric moisture to increase on the North Slope, furtherhampering the ability to detect thermal signals.

"More frequentwind events, more moisture in the air, these things are notgoing to be helping the situation at all," he said.

There have been no maulings by wild polar bears in Alaskasince 1993, and none in the North Slope oil fields.

However, bears have caused temporary shutdowns of ice roadoperations in the past, and in 2011, a security guard accidentally shot and killed a polar bear that was roaming BP'sEndicott oil field.