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This year I had a unique opportunity while in town. PBI and Frontiers North Adventures premiered a new film by Zacharias Kunuk and Ian Mauro. The documentary was filmed in Inuktitut with English subtitles and is called Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change. Some of you may recognize Zach from his last award winning project, Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). This new work is a documentary recording Inuit elder perspectives on climate change across the Nunavut region of the Canadian high arctic. Along with the discussions on observed changes witnessed by elders and their concerns about the future, the film highlights some fairly direct and sometimes angry views around polar bears, conservation efforts, and the scientists who study this animal.

My first week in the town of Churchill is focused around meetings with partners and scientists, so this is very much a working trip for me. Many of you may ask, why Churchill? WWF has long supported polar bear research efforts in the Hudson Bay region going back to the early 1970’s. We continue that direct support today, helping to maintain one of the best long term research and monitoring efforts on polar bears anywhere in the world. You can see tangible results of the current support via our online Polar Bear Tracker. This long term research has provided some of the clearest links between changes in polar bear population dynamics directly tied to changes in climate and sea ice.

It’s November 10th in Churchill, Manitoba, and something is not quite right. The air temperature is well above freezing on our arrival and there are only small remnants of a past snow across the mostly bare and brown tundra. There is no ice on Hudson Bay and little sign of any forming far to the north in Foxe Basin. This is disturbing to us, and even more disturbing to the local polar bears.

We were exhorted to “walk the talk.” So all 21 of us vowed to take up the eco-challenge – not to shower all week. Not such an impressive undertaking, you might point out, except we were living in extremely cramped quarters on a Tundra Buggy Lodge on the shores of Hudson Bay.

We are all happy to see fair weather in the morning. It is not unusual in coastal areas of Alaska to be stuck for days with fog, wind, and weather. We had heard reports of a brown bear and a cub along the road, but fail to see it on our way to the airstrip. Plenty of caribou and ptarmigan glance our way as we make our drive and there are patches of snow dotting the still brown tundra. Winter has not fully let go of this northern place.

Our last day for flight operations and we are all up early. Well, everyone but Jessica, our dedicated lab whiz, who was up until 3 AM working on the samples from the six bears we brought her late last night.

I stare out into a snowy and partially foggy morning as I work my way through breakfast and my morning coffee. Patchy squalls moving across the tundra and out on the ice – could go either direction today. The change in weather is expected, but we hoped for a couple of more blue sky weather days. The visibility is still fair, and the fixed wing will have no trouble flying, so we’ll push on out and see what we can accomplish today.

As luck would have it, the weather is good, but we are required to take the second mandatory crew rest day for our pilot (two off during any 14 day window). He would much rather be flying, but the rules are very clear. With only two more flight days for the season ahead, we begin to make plans for our return to Anchorage on Saturday. For our pilot Howard and our lab technician Jessica, it has been almost seven straight weeks of fieldwork – and as much as they like the job, they are ready to be home.

The winds have dropped a bit when I check the weather station data and we still have mostly clear skies. We coordinate with our fixed wing pilot in Kotzebue and make plans to meet up somewhere out on the ice west of Point Hope. We try to get the airplane out well ahead of us as he has much more endurance than our helicopter. Ideally, the plane will find a bear or at least tracks and we can take it from there.

The weather holds and even improves as we head into the last week of the project. Clear skies and sun, though the winds are forecast to pick up during the day. We’ll launch in the late morning as we’ve noticed over the years that the bears seem less active earlier in the day. Tracks and bears are also both easier to spot in the low angle light of the evening hours.