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Churchill’s visiting bears
Tourists come in more than just the two-legged variety in Northern Manitoba
By Mitchell Gray

You can get tossed in jail in Churchill, Manitoba just for being hungry or curious, and yet thousands of tourists make the trek to the remote city on Hudson Bay every fall. That’s because the tough-love penal system isn’t for humans — it’s for polar bears. As far as lockups go, there are places a lot worse than Polar Bear Jail. The sentences are short, the guards are friendly, and inmates get a free trip to the wilderness once they’ve done their time. It’s a good system — it protects the people from the bears and the bears from the people — but one thing has the potential to overcrowd the jail with ornery and dangerous inmates: global warming.

Tourists know Churchill as the “Polar Bear Capital of the World.” Each year in October and November, many of the region’s 1,200 polar bears amass on the shores near the tiny community, waiting for the water to freeze so they can lumber out onto the ice and feast on seals throughout the winter months, building fat reserves. Ecotourists watch the great white beasts — the world’s largest land carnivores — from special tundra vehicles tall enough to keep them out of the bears’ reach, but just right to look the occasional polar giant in the eye when it stretches up to give them a sniff.

As December nears, the male bears and non-pregnant females leave the tourists behind, not returning to land until the ice breaks up early the next summer. They fast throughout the summer months, losing much of their body weight, and by fall they’re ready for a meal.

Temperature changes in the Arctic over the last few decades mean the bears can be hungrier than ever when they reach the area around Churchill. Warmer weather has caused ice in the bay to melt an average of 10 to 14 days earlier in recent years, leaving the bears less time to feed.

“If the trend continues, eventually the bears won’t be on the ice long enough to put on sufficient fat reserves,” says Nick Lunn, a Canadian Wildlife Service researcher and 20-year bear watcher. This has led to concerns that the bears will become a greater danger to tourists and Churchill’s approximately 1,000 residents, and that more bears may end up chilling in the slammer, waiting to be transported out of the area. “If you have bears that are hungrier,” Lunn says, “you may have more human and bear interaction, more bears wandering around the town.” A hungry bear is enticed by the scent of human food and garbage, and the more time they spend in inhabited areas, the greater the chances of trouble. But Lunn says any increase in threat to humans is purely hypothetical at this point. There’s no need yet to build a new wing on the jail.

Richard Romaniuk agrees. He’s the Churchill district supervisor for Manitoba Conservation, and oversees the Polar Bear Alert program. “A person is in no more danger now of being attacked by a polar bear than in the past,” Romaniuk says. There hasn’t been a mauling or death in or around Churchill since 1984. Bears that could pose a threat to inhabitants are trapped or tranquilized and placed in the jail until they can be taken out of town. Romaniuk says global warming trends could increase the number of bear incidents, but not because the bears are behaving more aggressively due to hunger. Rather, it’s simply because a shorter freeze means they’re on land longer and have more potential for mischief.

Tourists need not be concerned. Their tour guides will tell them how to stay safe, says Thuraya Weedon, owner of Churchill Nature Tours. They’re not in danger, she says, “as long as they are always on the lookout for bears, and they keep their scarves and camera straps from dangling out the windows of the tundra vehicles.”

Regardless of the global warming trend, tourism in Churchill is going strong. More bears around the city should draw even more people — in the short term. If regional weather patterns continue, however, and the Hudson Bay ice melts progressively earlier in the seasons ahead, there is the potential that Churchill’s polar bear jail may one day be packed with dangerous prisoners. But for now, it’s just a quick stop for curious bears that wander too close on their journey out to an icy buffet.

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