Polar bears are “not encroaching on Churchill,” insisted artist Sandra Cook when I visited her home studio. “This is the polar bears’ land.” Given that fewer than 1,000 people live year-round in Churchill, on the edge of the Canadian Arctic, there are approximately as many polar bears as there are humans.
The remote community in Manitoba sits on a spot where the river meets the Hudson Bay. It’s here that, for thousands of years, bears have gathered at the start of winter, waiting for the first ice to form. However, as the Arctic continues to rapidly warm, each year the bears have to wait longer on land.
Cook has seen bear footprints in her backyard – “right where I walk every morning. That was terrifying.” Her teenage daughter, Kara, has been rushed indoors during breaks at school, because a polar bear was spotted approaching. This is part of everyday life in the so-called ‘polar bear capital of the world’.
The story of human/polar bear coexistence in a changing Arctic climate is what brought me to Churchill late last year. With its local population of bears, known as the Western Hudson Bay polar bears (or “blubber-hunting ice bears” as Alyssa McCall from Polar Bears International describes them), climate change puts the remote town in a uniquely difficult position.
Regardless of name, the bears need the sea ice on the bay. It’s their marine hunting platform, from which they pounce on the calorie-rich seals needed to power their huge bodies through the extreme cold. When the bay thaws in the summer, the bears move back onto the land. An increasingly early thaw and delayed freeze means that every year these polar bears spend about a month longer on shore than they did in the 1980s, according to research led by the US Geological Survey.
Now, between five per cent and upwards of 50 per cent of the bear population enjoy an extended summer on land, which vastly increases the likelihood of encounters with humans. The town of Churchill responds not by shooting bears (although that does, rarely and unfortunately, happen), but by following guidelines about how to avoid them. A specialist task force operated by Manitoba Conservation – the Polar Bear Alert Program – patrols the town 24/7. Any bears persistently hanging around are caught in humane traps and moved further along the coast, a safe distance away from people.
This is an intensive and relatively expensive operation. But it works. The last person to be killed by a bear in Churchill was a homeless man named Thomas Mutanen, who died in 1983 in the earliest days of the task force.
Today, attacks are e...
The remote community in Manitoba sits on a spot where the river meets the Hudson Bay. It’s here that, for thousands of years, bears have gathered at the start of winter, waiting for the first ice to form. However, as the Arctic continues to rapidly warm, each year the bears have to wait longer on land.
Cook has seen bear footprints in her backyard – “right where I walk every morning. That was terrifying.” Her teenage daughter, Kara, has been rushed indoors during breaks at school, because a polar bear was spotted approaching. This is part of everyday life in the so-called ‘polar bear capital of the world’.
The story of human/polar bear coexistence in a changing Arctic climate is what brought me to Churchill late last year. With its local population of bears, known as the Western Hudson Bay polar bears (or “blubber-hunting ice bears” as Alyssa McCall from Polar Bears International describes them), climate change puts the remote town in a uniquely difficult position.
Regardless of name, the bears need the sea ice on the bay. It’s their marine hunting platform, from which they pounce on the calorie-rich seals needed to power their huge bodies through the extreme cold. When the bay thaws in the summer, the bears move back onto the land. An increasingly early thaw and delayed freeze means that every year these polar bears spend about a month longer on shore than they did in the 1980s, according to research led by the US Geological Survey.
Now, between five per cent and upwards of 50 per cent of the bear population enjoy an extended summer on land, which vastly increases the likelihood of encounters with humans. The town of Churchill responds not by shooting bears (although that does, rarely and unfortunately, happen), but by following guidelines about how to avoid them. A specialist task force operated by Manitoba Conservation – the Polar Bear Alert Program – patrols the town 24/7. Any bears persistently hanging around are caught in humane traps and moved further along the coast, a safe distance away from people.
This is an intensive and relatively expensive operation. But it works. The last person to be killed by a bear in Churchill was a homeless man named Thomas Mutanen, who died in 1983 in the earliest days of the task force.
Today, attacks are e...
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BBC Science Focus (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025