Arctic communities testing new ‘bear-dar’ to detect wildlife threats

Nobody really wants to come face to face with a polar bear.

The Inuit have used highly developed observation skills and generations of knowledge to locate animals for thousands of years.

But conservation group Polar Bears International thought: What if there was a way to supplement this with technology to protect everyone?

“That led us to some safety systems that were originally developed for the military and to see if they could have applications in the wild,” said Jeff York, senior director of research and policy at Polar Bear International.

Enter “bear-dar.”

Bear-dar is a stationary radar designed to monitor the landscape and detect anything that moves. It can be used as an early warning system, alerting the public to the presence of a bear nearby.

“You can ask him to send you text message, you can send you an email, you can turn on the flashing light. You can even have it potentially trigger what we would call a remote deterrent. So he can turn on the strobe light, it can make a certain noise that can scare the bear, all from a distance,” York said.

Polar Bear International, along with military technology developer Spotter Global, spent years fine-tuning the technology in Churchill, Man., where polar bear sightings are common.

It involved teaching the artificial intelligence system what a polar bear was and what was just another big moving object. The system is constantly learning.

Increased presence of polar bears in Eureka

The system was installed in August 2025 at the Eureka weather station in the Qikiqtaaluk region of Nunavut, where Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) has nine staff and contractors. ECCC reported an increase in the presence of polar bears theree in recent years.

“It’s still a matter of evaluation. [bear-dar] potentially located inA tool to keep staff safe by alerting them to the presence of polar bears or other wildlife such as wolves, especially during low light and polar darkness months,” ECCC wrote in an email.

Residents of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard plan to try out this technology this winter.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, about 300 polar bears remain on Svalbard year-round rather than hunting on the ice edge.

Hilde Falun Ström, a citizen scientist and ambassador for the International Polar Bear Association, has lived on Svalbard for more than three decades and witnessed the effects of climate change pushing polar bears closer to civilization.

“I've seen devastating avalanches, landslides and melting glaciers. We as a community are seeing more polar bears on land. Polar bears need… to find other livelihoods,” she said.

Currently, communities in Svalbard rely on human sightings to detect polar bears. According to Ström, the dar bear can help ensure the safety of both people and animals.

“We are guests here and we are on their territory. [we could] be alert to their approach and find ways to use soft deterrents to scare them away,” she said.

But this technology doesn't come cheap. York said the base model package costs about $60,000 and could become more expensive if used to protect an entire community.

“At the end of the day, we are not in the radar business. We just wanted to see what it could do and we'll give it back to the private partners to take it from there,” he said.

The technology really proves the capabilities of visual detection software, he said, and communities can decide if they want to explore this further.