Last night our lecture was on the impact of climate change on the polar bears.

I won’t go into all the details about what is happening and why, the short version is that the spring breakup of the ice is getting earlier every year and the freeze later. Therefore the PBs are spending less time feeding, more time fasting and more time in heat that is dangerous for them. For every week they lose on the ice they come off 10 kilos lighter and a female needs 300 – 400 extra lbs of fat to carry off a successful pregnancy. The population in this area has decreased by 22% over the last 2 decades. It is estimated this area will not have any PBs by 2035.

The cub survival rate is down dramatically so the current population cannot replace itself.

They are expected to survive further north especially in those areas where the bears currently don’t come ashore at all because of continuous ice coverage.

While there are other food sources such as harbor seals and beluga whales they take much more energy to hunt and the bears always return to the same area and are unlikely to migrate north.

Today we had a drive into Churchill, a town of 1000 permanent residents. On the way we passed lots of evidence of former military presence – the former atmospheric rocket range, the live artillery fire range, military hospital used during war, Canadian Naval Intelligence radar site used during cold war. At it’s peak there were 5500 people on the military base and it was a strategic command base during the cold war. There was a large air field which housed the refueling tankers used to keep the B52s in the air 24/7.

There are still a lot of unexploded shells around and the Dept. of National Defense has a program to sweep areas each year to clean them up. Last year they retrieved 35 “live” unexploded items from Polar Bear Alley.

We passed a cargo ship that ran aground in the 50s (a local sight seeing place), a plane that went down in 1957.

We viewed the sea port out of which is shipped 500,000 metric tonnes of grain each year. The grain comes from Manitoba and Saskatchewan by huge trains, get stored in a complex of 300 computer operated silos and loaded onto cargo ships mainly heading to Europe.

We visited the Polar Bear “jail”. We were not allowed inside but saw the culvert traps used to capture the “problem” bears. The traps are baited with a rag soaked in seal oil and when the bear goes into the trap and pulls on the rag the door slams shut caving the bear. The trap is AT&T he’d to a trailer and brought to the PB jail. The trap is backed up to the cell and the two doors opened. One of the officers bangs on the top of the trap and the bear moves over to the cell.

There are individual cells, the bears are not fed as they don’t eat during this time anyway, they are given water and the cels are air conditioned. When the ice forms the bears are moved back into a trap, driven to the edge of the ice and released.

There are 23 cells, two of which are larger to house a mother and cubs. Currently there are 7 bears in residence.

Our tour of Churchill and area took all day, one of the highlights was the liquor store as we had no access to wine or beer until now. We visited a museum with an extensive collection of Inuit artifacts which was remarkable for the diversity and quality of it’s collection.

There is a very large building in town which houses a school (k to 12), a swimming pool, gym, movie theater, indoor playground and bowling alley. Churchill does not experience the youth suicide found in other northern communities perhaps because of the availability of employment and recreational activities.

In pictures posted today my hand is on a cast made from a Polar Bear paw print, the skull is a full size replica and the paw is an actual PB paw.