Organon1 you are a misinformed twit. Polar bears are a potentially threatened species that live in the circumpolar north. They are animals that know no boundaries. They pad across the ice from Russia to Alaska, from Canada to Greenland and on over to Norway's Svalbard archipelago. Biologists estimate their population at 22,000 to 27,000 bears, of which around 15,000 are in Canada. In 1973, the five nations with polar bear populations (Canada, Denmark, which governed Greenland, Norway, the U.S., and the former U.S.S.R.) entered into the International Agreement for the Conservation of Polar Bears. Here is what they encounter in each nation: In Norway, polar bears are completely protected and have been since 1973. On the glacial Svalbard islands, their population has rebounded from a low of about 1,000 to roughly 2,000 bears. Scientists are worried, however, about the effects of pollution on the bears. PCB levels in the polar bears of Norway and western Russia are two-and-a-half to seventeen times higher than those in North American populations.