In the polar bear capital of the world, the community lives with the predator close by and loves it

CHURCHILL, Manitoba (AP) – Sgt. Ian Van Nest rolls slowly through the streets of Churchill, his truck equipped with a gun and a barred back seat to catch anyone who needs to arrest him. His eyes looked back and forth, then settled on the crowd of people standing outside the van. He checks the area for safety and then talks quietly with the leader of the group who is not sure about the man's weapons.

“How are you today?” Van Nest asked. The leader replies cautiously, “Are we ready here?”

“You're doing well. You've got a lot of distance there. If you've got people getting out of the car, you've got to have a bear guard,” warned Van Nest, a conservation officer for the province of Manitoba, as tourists watched the polar bear from the rocks. “So, if that's you, just have your gun, 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 at the mouth of Hudson Bay, and keeping visitors safe from hungry and sometimes aggressive bears is a priority for Van Nest and many others. And it's getting harder as climate change shrinks the Arctic sea ice the bears rely on for hunting, forcing them to hide inland earlier and more often in search of food, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a group of scientists who track it. how endangered the animals are.

“You see a lot of bears because there are a lot of bears in the world for a long time to be seen” and they are willing to take a lot of risk, to get close to people, said Polar Bears International director of research and policy Geoff York. There are about 600 polar bears in the Western Hudson Bay population, about half of what it was 40 years ago, but that's still close to one bear for every one living in Churchill.

Yet this distant city not only lives with a nearby predator, but depends on it and loves it. Tourists eager to see the polar bears saved the town from shrinking when the military base closed in the 1970s, dropping the population from a few thousand to about 870. A 2011 government study calculated that the average polar bear visitor spends about $5,000 per visit. , draws more than $7 million from a small town with fancy restaurants and more than a dozen small places to stay among dirt roads and no. stop lights.

“Obviously we are used to bears so (if you see one) don't panic,” said Mayor Mike Spence. “It's their place again. It is important how a community gets along 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 the street on Halloween night before a third person scared off the animal.

“It was the scariest thing that ever happened in my life,” said Erin Greene, who survived their injuries along with a 72-year-old man who tried to fight off the bear with a shovel. Greene, who came to Churchill last year to work in business, said Churchill's other animals — the beluga whales he sings to as he races boats and his rescued sled dogs — helped him. recover from the trauma.

There have been no attacks since then, but the city is on alert.

On Halloween, trick or treating takes place when the bears are very hungry, and dozens of volunteers line the streets to prevent trouble. Anytime of the year, the nuisance bears that roam the city can often be put in a polar bear prison — a large Quonset house structure with 28 concrete and steel cells — before being released back into the wild. The building isn't crowded, but it can get busy enough to be noisy because of the banging and roaring inside, Van Nest said.

Residents show the pride of the polar bear in a way that mixes fear and fun, like a rollercoaster.

“You know we're the polar bear capital of the world, right? We have a product, we're going out there to see the bears safely,” said Dave Daley, who owns a gift shop, runs dog sleds and speaks to the city as a former president of the Chamber of Commerce. “I always tell tourists or whatever, 'You know what, they're like T. rex, of the dinosaur era. They are the kings of the arctic. They will eat you.”

Usually they don't.

The military base's rocket launch site seemed to deter bears, and when it was closed in the 1970s, more came, longtime residents said. So Churchill and state officials “put together a polar bear warning system to make sure members of the public are taken care of, protected,” said Spence, mayor since 1995.

The town's old bell rings every night at 10 p.m., signaling to people that it's time to go home to be safe from bears. But this Saturday night, three different bonfire parties are going on at the beach – the area near the school, the library and the hospital which is a hot spot for the bears coming inland. However, no one is leaving.

Then a truck pulled up, and out came one – one of the government's paid security guards – armed with a gun. He emerges from the dunes about 100 yards from the parties and scans the horizon for polar bears. Rangers are expected to scare off any bears with shots, flares, bear spray or noise – not kill them.

“Everybody's looking out for everybody,” Spence said. “It's just like that, it's just normal. It starts gear like a community living near polar bears, you always tend to leave your house and look like this and look forward. And that's in your DNA now.”

Georgina Berg remembers growing up in the 1970s outside Churchill, where many First Nations people lived, and how her father and mother reacted differently to seeing a bear. His father said he would see a bear digging through the trash and then pass by.

“He said, 'If you don't bother them, they won't bother you',” he recalled.

When the bear approached in later years, after the death of his father, his mother was afraid.

“Everything was like pandemonium. Everyone was screaming, and all the kids had to go in and everyone had to go home. Then we kept quiet in the house for a long time until we knew for sure that the bear was gone,” Berg recalled.

For Van Nest, a provincial official, the group he came to that day was much safer than a bear 300 meters away. He said the bear was “putting on a bit of a show” for tourists.

“This is a good situation to be in,” he said.

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