On the edge: the people and polar bears of an Arctic of heating

Just at the edge of the Bay of West of Hudson is the small town of Churchill, Manitoba.

Here, the sea meets the boreal forest under the undulating northern lights. Further north, trees stop growing. Snow covers a hard landscape of Canadian shield, and the incessant wind crosses the willows.

No path leads to Churchill. Only a railway line and an airport track, which carries the occasional charter plane.

But it attracts tourists and scientists equally because for a short time in autumn, the Arctic kings migrate through the city back to their homes in frozen sea ice. Travelers come here, from all over the world, looking for one thing: blocking the eyes with a polar bear.

The bears

Polar bears wind through Churchill every fall while waiting for ice to be formed in the bay. The males reach the ice first, wandering and testing the edges, eager to travel to the north, where they can finally look for the ringing seal, their main food source.

Scientists converge in Churchill because it is the most accessible point to study polar bears. The bears here are the most investigated in the world and the most photographed.

These Arctic Beasts have great personalities: they play and hug and take a nap to spend time. Men will often shoot, trying to meet so that they are prepared for battles loaded in spring, during the mating season.

Puppies remain close to their mothers for two or three years before being persecuted and forced to live alone. For the following year, they try the waters, sometimes they fight to survive while learning to hunt and stay in the tundra.

“A change marked in the ecosystem”

In recent years, however, Arctic warming is melting its habitat on ice, changing the behavior of bears: international polar bears scientists say that ice is forming two weeks later than in the 1980s, and retreating two weeks before in spring.

This change of month in its surroundings is forcing bears to keep the coast longer, closer to humans and farther from the lambs of the seal in the north.

It is a change, caused by the alterator climate, that their parents and grandparents did not have to face. Yes, the Bears have been constantly evolving, since they diverged from Grizzly approximately 500,000 years ago, but the rhythm of change is what is alarming scientists.

The main scientist of the Bears Polar Bears climate, Flavio Lehner, says that due to the decrease in sea ice, the population of polar bears in the west bay of Hudson is as low as 618, approximately half of what used to be in the 1980s.

“That is quite deep,” he says. “It is difficult to find other places, apart from that perhaps they have been cried in the Amazon, where there is such a marked change in the ecosystem caused by climate change.”

Lehner does not anticipate that the situation will improve, and beyond the decrease in the population, it is also seeing a change in behavior. It used to be much more typical to find mothers with trillions, which, in their personal experience, is now weird.

Polar Bears International scientists say that these bears can only keep comfortably on earth for 180 days. In other parts of the world, bears have been seen to hunt birds and reindeer, but scientists say that this high protein diet can damage their kidneys, and does not prevent them from losing 2-4 pounds per day when they are out of ice.

“The current rate of change is working too fast,” said John Whiteman, PBI chief research scientist. “Polar bears cannot evolve or acclimatize in time to be able to deal with our current rate of loss of sea ice.”

Whiteman hopes that the Polar Bears will stay over the next 10 years or so in Churchill, but the timeline begins to be confused 20 to 30 years in the future.

“We finally know if we lose sea ice, we lose polar bears,” Whiteman said.

The city

Churchill has always been a city in the precipice. Many lives have been lived, from home to the first nations to the exchange post to the military city so far, the capital of the world’s polar bear.

Attracts a special type of person. Often one who finds pleasure in solitude. The people who come to use are seminomated workers of the tourism industry, or maybe they are looking for a change. They are nature guides and enthusiasts, seasonal workers attracted by this slow and simpler rhythm of life.

Others, such as the Mayor of the 30 -year -old city Mike Spence, have spent their lives here. When I was a child, the conservation officers in the city fired from 20 to 22 bears a year. But over time, the approach has changed.

“First, we respect wildlife,” he says. “Polar bears are quite significant in the indigenous world: it is at the top of its food chain. There is a lot of respect in that.”

The city now faces a future in which the polar bear tour could disappear. Meanwhile, the community will be forced to coexist more closely with the bears while waiting for ice in the bay. And as the infrastructure also fights to adapt to a heating climate and a permafrost fusion, Spence is one of the many people looking for solutions.

“We have always been challenged,” says Spence. But the community also “generally finds a way.”

These solutions include taking command of a port and a railway line that collapsed in 2017 due to a combination of floods and lack of maintenance. Once you start operating at its maximum potential, hope is that you will appreciate more consistent jobs and resources for the community. Meanwhile, a new program in the city cultivates Microgreens, and the new garbage containers resistant to polar bears splash the streets, all to forge a sustainable path in the north for people and wildlife.

“What we must do now is to build on our young people who grow here, so that they play a more important role in the construction of a stronger community and a larger community,” says Spence. “Come for themselves what they have is quite beautiful.”

Fighting for a future

On the outskirts of the city, Wyatt Daley hooks his sled dogs, preparing to lead the first of three tours for the day. Autumn is the maximum tourist season, and will spend the day between the boreal forest trees, sliding over the snow.

Churchill is based on tourism that comes from those who want to see polar bears. To maintain their business, some tourist companies seek to pivot to protect their future.

One of these ways is to announce other aspects of this wild north: the dawn that dances above 300 nights of the year and the annual migration of Beluga whales in the summer.

But it is not just the economic engine that must be fed: there is a desire for families and the next generation to choose Churchill, I tend and taste everything it has to offer.

Wyatt Daley was one of those children who, years ago, begged his parents to move further south. His father Dave, an owner of a dog tourism company, shake his head and said: “We have the dogs, this is where we make a living.” And that was the end of that particular conversation.

He watched his friends and families move away, especially in the years of the intermediate school, looking for “better opportunities.” After graduation, he traveled all over the world, working in the tourism industry in Australia and Colonia. But he came home. Back to dogs and back to Churchill.

Churchill, he says, has given him “everything.” Feel a connection with dogs, with the earth. His father is his best friend. And that is exactly what he wants for his own son Noah, who is now 3 years old, who also has an affinity for dogs.

“I remember being a small child and standing on the back with my dad and toured,” he says. “That’s what I look most eager for now … I think of [Noah] Go out and toured with me. “

But this legacy is threatened by the Arctic heater, and it is a weight that Daleys feels while fighting to protect their way of life in the north.

“It is a terrifying thought to think that polar bears may not be here someday,” says Dave Daley. “The planet Earth is a living being, and we are the ones who step on it and change everything. I think we really need to handle it and start taking this seriously.”

In:
• Climate change
• Polar bear
• Canada