Polar bears: proceedings of the 15th Working Meeting of the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group, Copenhagen, Denmark, 29 June–3 July 2009

These 15th Proceedings provide an overview of the ongoing research and management activities on polar bears in the circumpolar Arctic. Together with the previous 14 proceedings, they provide an historic record of the international effort in protecting, studying, and managing polar bears. The document addresses more recent concerns of threats arising as a consequence of increased human activities in both the Arctic and in regions far beyond the Arctic. Previous proceedings included a Status Report for each of the world’s subpopulations, which focused largely on the known or unknown status as it related to harvest. In the Status Report of the 15th Proceedings, we provide a more comprehensive assessment of all threats to the status of each polar bear subpopulation.