It’s minus two degrees Celsius and there’s a light flurry of snow wafting about in the Arctic wind. Oh, and I’m having lunch with a polar bear. I’m devouring a bowl of steaming soup and chunky sandwiches in a tundra buggy; less than six metres away is the huge bear, sheltering from the bitterly cold wind behind a low bank of stunted willow bushes that thrive in the Canadian tundra around Churchill, a tiny town in northern Manitoba.
While I’m almost sated, the bear, munching lazily on some snow for hydration, is probably starving. Derek Kyostia, our guide and a tour leader with Frontiers North Adventures’ tundra buggy experiences, tells us that the animal may not have eaten for five months. Like others in his species – one of the most southerly-living species of polar bears in the world – the animal is waiting for the waters of the nearby Hudson Bay to freeze over so he can take to the ice in search of a meal: plump ringed seals and their pups, most likely.
“If there’s no ice, they can’t hunt,” explains Derek, who has been leading tours through this part of the world for four years. A biologist by training, he is fresh back in Manitoba, having spent the Canadian summer season on the lookout for grizzly bears in British Columbia. After Churchill he will make his way to Antarctica for the southern summer season.
I’m one of a dozen or so nature enthusiasts who have rugged up in the hope of spotting a polar bear or two, with a little help from tour organisers Frontiers North Adventures. Established some 30 years ago, the company in collaboration with Tundra Buggy Expeditions, is the largest of its kind in Churchill and offers tailored excursions to the largest attractions in the region.
On our first day here – we’re at the very tip of Manitoba – light snow falls across the town, making our chances of spotting a bear very bleak. We do spy some from afar and are crestfallen when they disappear into the white as we approach. But today, our second day in the snow, we’re excited to be up close and personal with a bear so early in the day.
It’s estimated that some 1,000 polar bears call this region of the world home (the entire world population, most of them living in the Arctic, is thought to be 20,000 to 25,000). Derek, along with the other guides and drivers, has come to recognise a few of the larger bears and has given them names. He’s familiar with the male bear we spot over lunch and calls him Twinkle Toes. Another rotund female that we come across later in the day is known as Jelly Belly.
“This male has a record,” says Derek pointing out Twinkle Toes’ small ear tags. “Either that or he’s been tagged on the beach.” He also has bloodstains marking his shoulders. “He’s been play-fighting or stealing food from another bear,” concludes Derek.
This is the second bear we’ve witnessed today. A little earlier, someone on our buggy had let out an excited yelp: “Bear at 10 o’clock!” Windows dropped down, cameras were are pointed and a white bundle of fur came into view.
Our buggy driver, Rick, decided to drive closer and moved into a good position adjacent to another buggy that has also spotted the bear. Polar bears have an exceptional sense of smell and before long, the bear ambled towards the vehicles to check us out. It stood on its back legs, leaning against the buggy for a better look. We sat very, very still and soaked up the majesty of the beast – the largest land predator in the world.
We set off again and while Rick watches out for his designated driving trails, we scan the countryside for cream-coloured mounds. “Look for movement,” he advises. “Otherwise we’ll see more polar rocks than bears.”
In this snow-white environment, most of the animals are also white: the Arctic hare and fox, snowy owls and even the grouse-like ptarmigan, which sheds its dappled-brown summer feathers and adopts white plumage for winter camouflage.
But it’s the polar bears we’ve come to find. At their size, you’d think that would be easy – sows can grow up to 2.5 metres long, boars up to three metres and can weigh 800-odd kilograms and sometimes up to 1,000. Standing on their hind legs they can measure three metres or more.
“These bears have been known to make a 1.2-metre vertical jump – that brings them up to nearly five metres above the ground,” says Rick. Good thing the windows are up in our buggy.
Tundra buggies are not sexy vehicles but with 1.1-metre-wide tyres, each around 1.7 metres high, they are practical in this harsh terrain. Generous in size and with a rear observation deck, each vehicle is fitted with comforts that include a washroom and a gas heater, around which we gather to warm cold hands.
Progress is slow – at times, we travel at walking pace: five or six kilometres per hour. And we stop on a regular basis to allow Derek and Rick to regale us with tales of life on the tundra.
Over lunch with Twinkle Toes, Rick tells us why the bears frequent the region around Hudson Bay each autumn. After months of going without food, he says, they need to get back on the ice to fatten up on seals in readiness for a long winter season of hunting, fishing, swimming and mating. After expending all this energy, they’ll retire to hibernate during the warmer summer months.
There is growing concern about the future of Hudson Bay’s polar bear population, which is estimated to shrink by around 30 percent over the next 50 years. Research conducted by the Canadian Wildlife Service suggests that there will also be (and already has been) a general decline in the body condition of these creatures over this time.
With the ice in Hudson Bay today melting about three weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, the polar bears have become victims of climate change. As the ice pack on which they depend melts thanks to warmer temperatures, their usual hunting season is greatly shortened, resulting in a lower level of body fat, which is essential for reproduction. Whereas in the past females might have produced two or three cubs, today most are giving birth to single pups, if they fall pregnant at all.
Still, the bears’ declining population has not deterred nature-lovers from descending on Churchill in their thousands to spot bears each October and November.
At the beginning of October, the bears move to the bay from their inland summer dens and wait on the outskirts of town for the water to freeze over so they can hunt and eat again. But for some, the smell of the local rubbish dump and the promise of ready-made meals are too desirable. Those caught in town are impounded in a polar-bear holding facility, where they are measured and tagged before being transported by helicopter and released into the wild. They are not fed in the holding pens and are only given snow for hydration – one year, they were fed in the holding pens and next season saw the animals breaking into the facility in search of food.
I can’t help but wonder if that’s how Twinkle Toes got her name. •
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