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The greys are lumbering north from the calving lagoons in Baja to their summer feeding grounds in the Bering, Beaufort and Chuckchi seas.

The recovery plan deals primarily with two polar bear subpopulations off the coast of Alaska, in the southern Beaufort and Chuckchi Seas.

But in other areas, like the Chuckchi sea off Alaska’s northern coast, populations and individual bears still appear to be healthy, Regehr said.

After a series of high profile environmental demonstrations, Hilary Clinton tweeted out against Shell’s plans to drill in Alaska’s Chuckchi Sea last month.

On 11 May, the Obama administration gave the effective go-ahead when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved Shell’s Exploration Plan for the Chuckchi Sea.