Trouble in the Arctic as polar bears and people face warming world

“Can I give you some advice about polar bears?” asks Tee, a confident 13-year-old we meet during a visit to a high school in Churchill, Canada.

“If there’s a bear that close to you,” he says, measuring a distance of about 30cm with his hands, “make a fist and punch it in the nose.

“Polar bears have very sensitive noses; they will just run away.”

Tee hasn’t had to test this advice. But growing up here, next to the largest land predator on the planet, means bear safety is a part of everyday life.

Signs, in shops and cafes, remind anyone going out to “be careful”. My favorite says: “If a polar bear attacks, you should counter.”

Fleeing from an attacking polar bear is, perhaps counterintuitively, dangerous. A bear’s instinct is to chase its prey, and polar bears can run at 40 km/h (25 mph).

Key Tip: Be alert and aware of your surroundings. Don’t walk alone at night.

Churchill is known as the polar bear capital of the world. Every year, Hudson Bay, at whose western end the city is located, thaws, forcing the bears to return to the coast. As frost sets in in the fall, hundreds of bears gather here, waiting.

“We have freshwater rivers flowing into the area and cold water coming in from the Arctic,” explains Alysa McCall of Polar Bears International (PBI). “So the freezing happens here first.

“For polar bears, sea ice is a big meal: it’s access to their main prey, seals. They’re probably excited about a big meal of seal blubber; they haven’t eaten much all summer on land.”

There are 20 known subpopulations of polar bears throughout the Arctic. This is one of the southernmost and best studied.

“They’re our fat, white, hairy canaries in the coal mine,” Alysa explains. “In the 1980s we had about 1,200 polar bears here and we have lost almost half of them.”

The decline It’s tied to the amount of time the bay is now ice-free, a period that gets longer as the climate warms. Without sea ice there is no frozen shelf for seal hunting.

“Here the bears stay on land about a month longer than their grandparents,” Alysa explains. “That puts pressure on mothers. (With less food) it’s harder to stay pregnant and sustain those babies.”

Although their long-term survival is precarious, the bears attract conservation scientists and thousands of tourists to Churchill each year.

We joined a group from PBI to search for bears in the subarctic tundra, just a few miles from the city. The team travels in a tundra buggy, a type of off-road bus with huge tires.

After some distant sightings, we have a close encounter that will take your breath away. A young bear approaches and investigates our slow convoy of two buggies. He sneaks up, sniffs one of the vehicles, then jumps up and plants two giant paws on the side of the buggy.

The bear casually drops to all fours, then looks up and briefly glances at me. It is deeply confusing to look into the face of an animal that is both adorable and potentially deadly.

“He could be seen sniffing and even licking the vehicle, using all his senses to investigate,” says PBI’s Geoff York, who has worked in the Arctic for more than three decades.

Being here in “bear season” means Geoff and his colleagues can test new technologies to detect bears and protect people. The PBI team is currently fine-tuning a radar-based system called ‘bear-dar’.

The experimental equipment, a tall antenna with detectors that scan 360 degrees, is installed on the roof of a lodge in the middle of the tundra near Churchill.

“It has artificial intelligence, so we can basically teach it what a polar bear is,” Geoff explains. “This works 24/7, you can see at night and in low visibility.”

Protecting the community is the job of the polar bear warning team – trained rangers who patrol Churchill every day.

We travel along with ranger Ian Van Nest, who is searching for a stubborn bear that he and his colleagues tried to chase away earlier that day. “He turned around and walked back (towards) Churchill. He doesn’t seem interested in leaving.”

For bears intent on prowling around town, the team can use a live trap: a tube-shaped container, baited with seal meat, with a door that the bear opens when it climbs inside.

“Then we put them in the detention center,” Ian explains. The bears are held for 30 days, a period set to teach the bear that it is bad to come to town to look for food, but that does not put the animal’s health at risk.

They are then moved, either on the back of a trailer or occasionally by helicopter, and released further along the bay, away from people.

Cyril Fredlund, who works at Churchill’s new scientific observatory, remembers the last time a polar bear killed a person in Churchill, in 1983.

“I was right in town,” he says. “The man was homeless and at night he was in an abandoned building. There was also a young bear there that knocked him down with its paw, as if he were a seal.”

People came to help, Cyril remembers, but they couldn’t get the bear away from the man. “It was like he was guarding his food.”

Around that time, the polar bear alert program was launched. Since then, no polar bear has killed anyone here.

Cyril is now a technician at the new Churchill Marine Observatory (CMO). Part of your job is to understand exactly how this environment will respond to climate change.

Under its retractable roof are two giant pools filled with water pumped directly from Hudson Bay.

“We can do all kinds of controlled experimental studies looking at changes in the Arctic,” says Professor Feiyue Wang.

One implication of a less icy Hudson Bay is a longer operating season for the port, which is currently closed for nine months a year. A longer season during which the bay thaws and becomes open sea could mean more ships coming in and out of Churchill.

Studies at the observatory aim to improve the accuracy of sea ice forecasting. The investigation will also examine the risks associated with expanding the port. One of the first investigations is an experimental oil spill. Scientists plan to release oil into one of the pools, test cleanup techniques and measure how quickly the oil breaks down in cold water.

For Churchill Mayor Mike Spence, understanding how to plan for the future, particularly when it comes to shipping goods in and out of Churchill, is vital to the city’s future in a warming world.

“We are already studying the possibility of extending the season,” he says, pointing to the port, which stopped operating during the winter. “In ten years this will be a very lively place.”

Climate change poses a challenge for the polar bear capital of the world, but the mayor is optimistic. “We have a great city,” he says, “a wonderful community. And the summer season (when people come to see the beluga whales in the bay) is growing.”

“We are all facing climate change,” he adds. “Does that mean you cease to exist? No, you adapt. You figure out how to take advantage of it.”

While Mike Spence says “the future is bright” for Churchill, it may not be so bright for the polar bears.

Tee and his friends look out over the bay from a window at the back of the school building. Polar Bear Warning Team vehicles are gathering outside, trying to lure a bear away from town.

“If climate change continues,” reflects Tee’s classmate Charlie, “the polar bears might stop coming here.”

The teacher walks over to make sure someone is coming to pick up the children and that they are not walking home alone. All part of the daily routine in the polar bear capital of the world.