How are polar bears doing 15 years after the IUCN declared them ‘vulnerable’ to extinction?

What we’ve learned over the last 15 years is that polar bears only require sea ice until about mid-May or mid-June (depending on the latitude) and again in the late fall (November) through the winter. As long as ice is present at those times the bears will be fine. The idea that summer sea ice is essential for polar bear survival was an early assumption made by polar bear specialists that turned out to be wrong.