Hidden under the vast whiteness of an arctic winter, polar bear mothers with very young cubs wait out the cold in snow dens, perfectly concealed from the outside world. Mapping these den locations will help protect polar bear families from industrial disturbances--but finding them has long been a challenge.

A PBI team is testing out new technology in Alaska that could make the process easier, working in collaboration with Dr. Tom Smith of Brigham Young University and the U.S. Geological Survey. Best of all: The process is so unobtrusive that denning families won't even know their secret has been found.

We're counting down the days to International Polar Bear Day on February 27th! Once again, we're celebrating it as a worldwide day of action to reduce carbon emissions. Please join us by taking our Thermostat Challenge and making it a habit.

For greater momentum, invite your workplace or school to take the challenge--or reach even wider with our Thermostat Challenge Community Action Toolkit. And don't forget: Make additional commitments and share photos of your actions on our Save Our Sea Ice Community Page.

The Thermostat Challenge is the first of a series of events in our Save Our Sea Ice (SOS) campaign.

As the wind howls across the frozen plain of the North Slope, PBI's director of field operations, BJ Kirshhoffer, is preparing for his trip to Alaska to look for maternal polar bear dens. He's ready to brave the cold to locate (but not disturb) polar bear moms and cubs that are snuggled in their dens beneath the snow and ice. We caught up with BJ before his trip north to find out what it's really like up there. | More

Among the wonders of an arctic summer are the great colonies of thick-billed murres that nest on rocky cliffs above the cold arctic waters below. Inelegant fliers, the stubby-winged birds take off like torpedoes once in the water, chasing down prey including small fish and squid.

But scientists are concerned that these seabirds are at risk, partly because of egg predation by landlocked polar bears, and party because the birds have to fly farther from shore to reach productive hunting grounds on the ice edge. Biologists are closely monitoring murres and other arctic birds to see how they are faring.

Fun fact: Murres sometimes use guano to glue their eggs to precarious cliff edges.