Polar bear numbers have risen since 2005, no matter how you look at it:
USGS estimated 24,500 (average) polar bears in 2005.
IUCN estimated 26,500 (average of 22,000-31,000) in 2015
(assessment completed in July, released in November).
Subpopulation surveys completed or reported after July 2015 (Baffin Bay, Kane Basin, Barents Sea) added ~2,000 bears.
This brings the adjusted average total at 2015 to ~28,500.
This may not be a statistically significant increase but it is also not the catastrophic decline that was predicted to occur in association with the abrupt drop of summer sea ice in 2007 to a new average of about 3-5 mkm2 [updated 1 June 2017].
Explained in full in this published paper, pgs 20-21:
Crockford, S.J. 2017 V3. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 2 March 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3 Open access. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3
UPDATE 26 March 2019: See “Latest global polar bear abundance ‘best guess’ estimate is 39,000 (26,000-58,000)“
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