Arviat residents keeping an eye on Hudson Bay polar bears have fresh information from the summer 2026 tracker update released August 10 by Polar Bears International. The update covers the Western Hudson Bay population, which includes the bears that travel through the area around Arviat on the west shore of the bay.
According to Polar Bears International, sea ice in Western Hudson Bay crossed below the 30 percent threshold on June 27, 2026. That marks the start of the ice-free period, the 16th earliest break-up date in 48 years of satellite records.
One of the tracked bears, a 14-year-old female known as Betty White, is currently staying close to the west coast of Hudson Bay not far from Arviat. Polar bears use the Arviat area as a corridor between the Kivalliq region and Hudson Bay, and the community has seen growing numbers of bear encounters in recent years.
Between mid-September and the end of December 2025, Arviat’s Polar Bear Deterrence Program dealt with 508 polar bear interactions and received 166 urgent calls on the emergency polar bear line. That was a record number, linked to delayed sea ice formation that kept bears on land longer. A male polar bear in the Kivalliq region can reach three metres in length and weigh between 350 and 590 kilograms, which makes deterrence work a serious safety matter.
The longer ice-free period is also hard on the bears themselves. On average, a polar bear loses about one kilogram of body weight every day it is fasting. Because of climate change, the ice-free period is now three to four weeks longer than in the early 1980s. The Western Hudson Bay population has dropped by 27 percent in five years, from 842 bears in 2016 to 618 in 2021, roughly half its size in the 1980s.
