Alaska's Wild Arctic Village Is The Best Place In The World To Spot Polar Bears

There are few creatures as charismatic as the polar bear, and much of that appeal lies in their ability to survive in some of the world's most inhospitable and hard-to-reach places. For human tourists aiming to see polar bears in the wild, that means preparing for a trek into the Arctic wilderness with no guarantee of a sighting. That is, unless that trek takes you to the remote Alaskan community of Kaktovik, which is arguably the world's best and most reliable place to spot a polar bear in the wild.

There's no way around this community's extreme isolation. Kaktovik is located on Barter Island well above the Arctic Circle on Alaska's North Slope and inaccessible by road, so getting there will most likely require a two-hour northbound flight on a bush plane from Fairbanks (though it's also possible to fly in from Deadhorse). It's about as remote as it gets, and services and amenities are very limited in town. But here in the northernmost fringes of the Last Frontier, you'll discover the most popular polar bear hangout around. 

In the summer and autumn months, when the Arctic seas are no longer covered in ice, polar bears venture on land, and Kaktovik sees many of those bars. This is largely thanks to the Alaskan Native Iñupiat village's subsistence whaling practices, which creates a readily-available food source for polar bears in the lean summer months. As a result, roughly 80 bears visit the village most years, and sightings are so frequent that the town has had to enact polar bear patrols to help residents coexist safely with the local bear population. All of this makes Kaktovik an extraordinary wildlife-viewing destination — but it's also a fragile and fraught one.

The far-northern Iñupiat village of less than 300 permanent residents is surrounded by the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an area often called 'America's last true wilderness,' Kaktovik is the very definition of "off the beaten path." But the town's reputation as a favorite summer hangout for polar bears sparked the interest of animal-loving travelers, and for many years, bear-viewing tours were a booming business among "last-chance tourists" looking to see species threatened by climate change.

This wasn't all for the best, though. Though bear tourism created jobs and generated revenue, logistical issues plagued the town as bear viewing brought more visitors to Kaktovik than the infrastructure could sustain. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, this led to a government order which shut down popular boat tours citing safety concerns and the social and environmental drawbacks of unsustainably increased tourism. In the years since, locals eager to get back in business have been working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to bring bear viewing back to Kaktovik while mitigating the logistical issues that made earlier tours unsustainable.

This collaboration is a work in progress, so polar bear tours in Kaktovik currently still aren't operating, but the community is eager to get new and more sustainable tours up and running and hoping to offer tours as early as the 2027 viewing season. Whatever the final timeline, it's worth the wait to ensure that the tours are ethical wildlife travel experiences that are respectful of the polar bears and beneficial to a community that's working hard to make its natural wonders accessible to the world again. And since traveling to Kaktovik requires extensive in-advance planning, it's never too early to get this revamped ecotourism destination on your radar.