Challenges in the Arctic as polar bears and humans face global warming

“Can I give you some polar bear advice?” asks Qi, a confident 13-year-old we meet while visiting Churchill High School.

“When the bear is so close to you,” she says, measuring the distance with her hands about 30 cm. “Make a fist and hit them in the nose.

“Polar bears have very sensitive noses—they’ll just run away.”

Have you tried this advice? But growing up here – next to the largest land predator on the planet – means bear safety is part of everyday life.

Signs in shops and cafes remind everyone who goes out to be careful. My favorite line is, “If a polar bear attacks, you must fight back.”

Running away from an oncoming polar bear is – perhaps counter-intuitively – dangerous. A bear’s instinct is to chase prey, and polar bears can run at speeds of up to 25 mph (40 km/h).

Top tip: Be alert and aware of your surroundings. Do not walk alone at night.

Churchill is known as the polar bear capital of the world. Every year, Hudson Bay – on the western edge of which the city is located – thaws and the bears come ashore. When the frosts come in autumn, hundreds of bears gather here and wait.

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

“For polar bears, sea ice is a big dinner plate – it’s access to their main prey, seals. They must be very happy to eat seal blubber – they haven’t eaten much all summer on land.”

There are 20 subpopulations of polar bears known in the Arctic. It is one of the southernmost and most studied.

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

Decline is tied to the length of time the gulf is now ice-free, a period that increases as the climate warms. No sea ice means no frozen platform for seal hunting.

“Here, the bears are on earth about a month longer than their grandparents,” Alice explains. “It puts pressure on the mother. (With less food) it’s harder to stay pregnant and carry babies.”

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

A group from PBI and I are looking for bears in the sub-arctic tundra – just a few miles from the city. The team rides in a tundra buggy, a type of off-road bus with huge tires.

After a few distant sightings, we have a heart-stopping close encounter. A young bear approaches and examines our slow motorcade of two carts. He climbs sideways, sniffs one of the vehicles, then jumps in and places two giant paws on the side of the buggy.

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

“You could see him sniffing and even licking the vehicle — using all his senses to investigate,” says PBI’s Jeff York, who has worked in the Arctic for more than three decades.

Being here during “bear season” means Jeff and his colleagues can test new technologies to detect bears and protect people. The PBI team is currently setting up a radar system called “Dar Bear”.

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

“He has artificial intelligence, so here we can basically teach him what a polar bear is,” Jeff explains. “It works 24/7, can see at night and in poor visibility.”

Protecting the community is the job of the Polar Bear Prevention Team – trained rangers who patrol Churchill every day.

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

For bears that intend to roam the city, the team can use a live trap: a tube-shaped container filled with seal meat, with a door that the bear opens when it climbs inside.

“Then we put them in a detention center,” Jan explains. The bears are kept for 30 days, a period designed to teach the bear that coming to the city in search of food is negative, but it does not endanger the animal’s health.

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

Cyril Fredlund, who works at the new Churchill Science Observatory, remembers the last time a person was killed by a polar bear in Churchill in 1983.

“It was right in the city,” he says. “The man was homeless and was in an abandoned building at night. There was also a young bear – he took it off with his paw like a seal.”

People came to help, Kirill recalls, but they could not pull the bear away from the man. “It was like he was protecting his food.”

Around that time, the polar bear alert program was established. Since then, no one has been killed by a polar bear here.

Cyril is currently working as a technician at the new Churchill Marine Observatory (CMO). Part of his responsibilities is to understand how this environment will respond to climate change.

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

“We can conduct various controlled experimental studies studying changes in the Arctic,” says Professor Feiyue Wang.

One consequence of the less icy Hudson Bay is a longer season for the port, which is now closed for nine months of the year. A longer season during which the bay thaws and becomes open water can mean more ships come in and out of Churchill.

Research at the observatory is aimed at improving the accuracy of sea ice forecasting. The study will also examine the risks associated with port expansion. One of the first studies is an experimental oil spill. Scientists plan to release the oil into one of the basins, test cleanup methods and measure how quickly the oil breaks down in cold water.

For Churchill Mayor Mike Spence, understanding how to plan for the future, especially when it comes to getting goods to and from Churchill, is vital to the city’s future in a warming climate.

“We are already considering extending the season,” he says, pointing to the port, which has shut down for the winter. “Ten years from now, it’s going to be hectic.”

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

“We all face the challenge of climate change,” he adds. “Does that mean you cease to exist? No – you adapt. You work out how to take advantage of it.”

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

Ti and her friends look out over the bay from a window at the back of the school building. Cars of the polar bear warning team gather in the street, trying to drive the bear away from the city.

“If climate change continues,” thinks classmate Tee Charlie, “the polar bears might just stop coming here.”

The teacher comes over to make sure that someone is coming to pick up the children – that they are not going home alone. It’s all part of the daily routine of the polar bear capital of the world.