Polar bears increasingly encounter humans as ice loss forces them onshore. Managing these encounters protects both human safety and individual bear welfare.
Polar bear-human conflict creates welfare harm for bears through the lethal management that conflict situations typically produce when not well-managed. Bears that learn to associate human settlements with food are on a trajectory toward being killed — either in a conflict encounter or through control programs. Non-lethal deterrent programs that keep bears moving away from settlements and remove problem individuals to holding facilities rather than immediately killing them provide both welfare protection for individual bears and community safety. The Churchill polar bear jail — temporary holding that allows relocation rather than killing — is an imperfect but welfare-positive intervention. The root cause is food-stressed bears driven to human areas by declining sea ice. Without addressing sea ice loss through climate action, conflict management is a holding action that cannot prevent long-term welfare deterioration.