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Get in the car! – BBC team cuts short filming as a polar bear is spotted nearby
Can I give you some polar bear advice? asks Tee, a confident 13-year-old we meet during a visit to Churchill’s high school. If there’s a bear this close to you, make a fist and punch it in the nose. Polar bears have very sensitive noses – it’ll just run away.
Signs – in shops and cafes – remind anyone heading outside to be “bear aware”. My favourite reads: “If a polar bear attacks you must fight back.”
Running away from a charging polar bear is – perhaps counterintuitively – dangerous. A bear’s instinct is to chase prey and polar bears can run at 25mph (40kmph).
Churchill is known as the polar bear capital of the world. Every year, the Hudson Bay – on the western edge of which the town is perched – thaws, and forces the bears on shore. As the freeze sets in in Autumn, hundreds of bears gather here, waiting.
There are 20 known sub-populations of polar bears across the Arctic. This is one of the most southerly and best studied.
The decline is tied to the amount of time the bay is now ice-free, a period that is getting longer as the climate warms. No sea ice means no frozen seal-hunting platform.
We’re already looking into extending the season, says Churchill’s mayor, Mike Spence, gesturing towards the port, which has ceased operating for the winter. In ten years’ time, this will be bustling.
Climate change poses a challenge for the polar bear capital of the world, but the mayor is optimistic. We have a great town, a wonderful community. And the summer season – [when people come to see the Beluga whales in the bay] – is growing.
If climate change continues, the polar bears might just stop coming here, muses Tee’s classmate Charlie.
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