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By Victoria Gill, @vic_gill, Science correspondent, BBC News
At the end of the Canadian Arctic summer, polar bears head inland to wait for the ice to form.
And while thousands of tourists flock to catch a glimpse of these magnificent predators, researchers are developing novel ways to keep people and bears safely separated.
New tracking devices that stick in polar bears’ fur could be the key to protecting both people and bears – by closely monitoring the animals’ locations.
Polar bears now spend more of the year on land, as Arctic sea ice melts, so conservationists are increasingly concerned about bears and people coming into contact.
The tracking tags, which have been tested on bears in Canadian Arctic, could help prevent those encounters, by “keeping a remote eye” on the bears.
Lead researcher Tyler Ross, a PhD candidate from York University in Toronto, said the fur tags were “particularly promising” for the prevention of these “human-bear interactions”.
In communities in the southern Canadian Arctic, where the scientists tested these tags, polar bears that wander too close to a community are sometimes caught, transported and released in carefully selected sites away from towns and villages.
“These tags could be fitted to those bears to monitor where they are after they’ve been released,” explained Mr Ross.
“If they’re coming back towards the community, conservation staff would have a sense of where they are, and they could head them off. I think that’s where they offer considerable promise.”
The researcher, who studies polar bear ecology, also says the tags could fill important gaps in knowledge about the bears. And
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