CHURCHILL, Manitoba (AP) — Staff Sgt. Ian Van Nest drives slowly through the streets of Churchill, his truck equipped with a gun and a back seat with bars to hold back anyone he needs to arrest. His eyes dart back and forth, then settle on a crowd of people standing in front of a van. He scans the area for safety, then quietly speaks to the leader of the group, unsure of the man’s weapons.
“How are you doing today?” » asks Van Nest. The leader responds suspiciously: “Are we okay with you here? »
“You’re good. There you have a lot of distance. When people get out of the vehicle, you should have a bear monitor,” warns Van Nest, a conservation officer for the province of Manitoba, as tourists observe a polar bear on the rocks “So if that’s you, just have your shotgun with you, right? Slugs and cracker shells if you have them or a scary gun.”
It’s the start of polar bear season in Churchill, a small town on a spit of land jutting into Hudson Bay, and protecting tourists from hungry and sometimes ferocious bears is an essential task for Van Nest and many others. And it’s becoming increasingly difficult as climate change shrinks the Arctic sea ice that bears rely on for hunting, forcing them to prowl inland earlier and more often in search of food, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a group of scientists that tracks how endangered species are.
“You see more bears because there are more bears on land for longer periods of time to be seen” and they are willing to take more risks, getting closer to people, said Geoff York, director of Polar Bears International research and policy. There are about 600 polar bears in this western Hudson Bay population, about half what it was 40 years ago, but that’s still nearly one bear for every person in Churchill.
Yet this isolated town not only lives with the predator next door, but depends on it and even loves it. Visitors eager to see polar bears saved the town from demise when a military base closed in the 1970s, dropping the population from a few thousand to about 870 residents. A 2011 government study calculated that the average polar bear tourist spends about $5,000 per visit. , pumping more than $7 million into a small town that’s home to fancy restaurants and more than two dozen small lodgings amid dirt roads and no stoplights.
“We’re obviously used to bears, so (when you see one) you don’t start shaking,” Mayor Mike Spence said. “It’s their domain too. It’s important to know how the community coexists with bears and wildlife in general to truly get along. We are all connected.
It’s been more than a decade since a bear mauled two people in an alley late on Halloween night before a third person scared the animal away.
“It’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened in my life,” said Erin Greene, who, along with a 72-year-old man who tried to fight off the bear with a shovel, survived his injuries. Greene, who had come to Churchill the year before for a job in tourism, said it’s Churchill’s other animals – the beluga whales she sings about while leading paddle boat tours and her dozen dogs. retired sled saved – who helped her. recover from the trauma.
There have been no attacks since, but the city remains vigilant.
On Halloween, trick-or-treating takes place when the bears are hungriest, and dozens of volunteers line the streets to keep out of trouble. At any time of year, troublesome bears that wander into town too often can be incarcerated in the Polar Bear Prison – a large Quonset hut-style structure with 28 concrete and steel cells – before being released into the nature. The building doesn’t fill up, but it can get busy enough to be noisy from the banging and groaning inside, Van Nest said.
Residents show their pride in polar bears in a way that mixes terror and pleasure, much like a roller coaster.
“You know we’re the polar bear capital of the world, right? We have the product, just go see the bears safely,” said Dave Daley, who owns a gift shop, runs dog sleds and talks about town as the former president of the Chamber of Commerce that he is. “I always tell tourists or whatever, ‘You know what, they’re T. rex from the dinosaur era.’ They are the lords of the Arctic. They will eat you.
Usually this is not the case.
The military base’s rocket launch site seemed to keep the bears away, and when it closed in the 1970s, they came more, longtime residents said. Churchill and provincial authorities “have implemented a polar bear alert program to ensure community members are cared for and protected,” said Spence, mayor since 1995.
The city’s old curfew siren sounds every night at 10 p.m., suggesting to people that it’s time to go home to protect themselves from bears. But this Saturday evening, three different bonfires are taking place on the town beach – a spot next to the school, library and hospital that is a particular hot spot for bears coming inside land. However, no one leaves.
Then a truck arrives and a lone figure – one of the government-paid guards – gets out, armed with a shotgun. He walks on the dunes about 100 meters from the parties and scans the horizon for polar bears. Wardens are supposed to scare away any bears with warning shots, flares, bear spray or noise – not kill them.
“It’s just everyone looking out for everyone,” Spence said. “So it’s just, it’s just normal. It starts as a community that lives alongside polar bears, you always go out of your house and you look like this and you look ahead. And it’s just in your DNA now.
Georgina Berg remembers growing up in the 1970s outside of Churchill, where many First Nations people lived, and how differently her father and mother reacted to a bear sighting. Her father, she said, would see a bear rummaging through garbage and would simply walk by.
“He said, ‘If you don’t bother them, then they won’t bother you,'” she recalls.
Later, when a bear approached, after his father’s death, his mother was afraid.
“Everything was like chaos. Everyone was screaming, and all the kids had to go in and everyone had to go home. And then we were silent in the house for a long time until we were sure that this bear was gone,” Berg recalls.
For Van Nest, the provincial agent, the group he encountered that day was perfectly safe from a bear about 300 yards (yards) away. He said the bear was “putting on a bit of a show” for tourists.
“It’s a great situation,” he said. “The tourists are at a safe distance and the bear is doing its natural job and not being harassed by anyone.”
___
Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on @borenbears
______
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropic organizations, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
