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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 103 / Tuesday, June 1, 2021 / Proposed Rules
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Histogram of Onshore Encounters 200-

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Figure 2-Distribution of onshore polar bear encounters on the North Slope of Alaska in the period 2014-2018 by distance to shore km. The decrease in encounters was used to designate a "coastal" zone up to 2.0 km 1.2 mi from shore and an "inland" zone greater than 2.0 km 1.2 mi from shore.

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Dividing the Year Into Seasons As we described in our review of polar bear biology above, the majority of
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polar bears spend the winter months on the sea ice, leading to few polar bear encounters on the shore during this season. Many of the proposed activities are also seasonal, and only occur either in the winter or summer months. In order to develop an accurate estimate of the number of polar bear encounters that may result from the proposed activities, we divided the year into seasons of high bear activity and low bear activity using the Services LOA

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database. Below is a histogram of all bear encounters from 2014 through 2018
by day of the year Julian date. Two clear seasons of polar bear encounters can be seen: An open-water season that begins in mid-July and ends in midNovember, and an ice season that begins in mid-November and ends in mid-July. The 200th and 315th days of the year were used to delineate these seasons when calculating encounter rates Figure 3.

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The histogram illustrates a steep decline in human-polar bear encounters at 2 km 1.2 mi from shore. Using this data, we divided the North Slope into the coastal zone, which includes offshore operations and up to 2 km 1.2
mi inland, and the inland zone, which includes operations more than 2
km 1.2 mi inland.