polar bears

It’s the first day out for our new group and I am amazed and happy to look out on the Bay at first light – ice is forming well out onto the tidal flats! This is a stark change from just five days ago when we flew over this same area during our coastal survey and saw only open water. The Wildlife Management Area just east of Churchill is unique and protected for this very reason – ice forms and is retained along this part of the coast early in the winter and remains late in the spring. This is also why so many polar bears remain, or migrate into this area in the late autumn as they await their opportunity to return to the sea ice.

Today I’m joining a special group of visitors from Germany led by a colleague from their WWF home office. WWF Germany, in partnership with Wick’s (the company many of us know as Vick’s), has become a funding partner of the WWF Global Arctic Program and our polar bear conservation efforts. We are all very lucky to be joining Frontiers North Adventures for their final trip of 2010, and the only trip that is permitted into Wapusk National Park and all the way to Cape Churchill.

A snowstorm at last and it looks like winter may ultimately be arriving. Flights are cancelled or delayed and it’s finally looking a lot more like the sub-arctic. As sometimes happens when you are at the right place and at the right time, an opportunity arises that was unexpected.

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 going to be different, jazz things up. Our group of five communicators who met two days prior was tasked with leading a discussion on climate change impacts at this month’s inaugural communicators’ camp, hosted by Polar Bears International in Churchill, Manitoba.

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.

A large adult polar bear casually circles the Tundra Buggy Lodge, evidently drawn by the scent of human dinner being prepared. The lodge is being buffeted by 60-km winds whipping off Hudson Bay. Nearby an Arctic fox is scavenging on the tundra, opportunistically monitoring the humans in the box on wheels, while keeping a respectful distance from the bear.

WWF Canada communications specialist, Paulette Roberge, is attending the inaugural Polar Bears International Communicators Leadership Workshop where participants will explore the tundra, collaborate on blogs and brainstorm ways to spread the urgent message of climate change impacts on polar bear habitats. Read her blog entry on her journey to the workshop.