Flora and Fauna
There is little plant growth, consisting mostly of moss and some scurvy grass, but no trees. The only indigenous land mammals are a few arctic foxes. Despite its name, Bear Island is not a permanent residence of polar bears, although many arrive with the expanding pack ice in the winter. Occasionally, a bear will stay behind when the ice retreats in spring and remain through the summer months. Moreover, the sub-population of Ursus maritimus polar bears found here is a genetically distinct set of Polar Bears associated with the Barents Sea region. Ringed Seal and Bearded Seal, prey of the Polar bear, live in the waters near Bjørnøya, but the formerly common walrus has nowadays become a rare guest. The only land birds are the snow bunting and ptarmigan, but the island is very rich in guillemot, puffin, fulmar, Black-legged Kittiwake, glaucous gull and other seabirds that inhabit the vast cliffs in the south. The pink-footed goose and other species visit the island during their seasonal migration between Svalbard's northern islands and mainland Europe. Bear Island's freshwater lakes are home to a population of arctic char.
Bear Island was the site of a pioneering ecological study by Victor Summerhayes and Charles Elton in the early 1920s, which produced one of the first food web diagrams.
Read more about this topic: Bear Island (Norway)
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