Polar bears are causing trouble in the Arctic and people are facing a warming world.

“Can I give you some polar bear advice?” asks Tee, a confident 13-year-old we meet during a visit to Churchill’s high school.

“If a bear is that close to you,” she says as she moves about 30cm away with her hands. “Make a fist and punch in the nose.

“Polar bears have very sensitive noses – they’ll just run away.”

T need not test this advice. But growing up here — with the planet’s largest land predator — means bear protection is part of everyday life.

Signs – in shops and cafes – remind anyone going out to be “beware”. My favorite reads: “If a polar bear attacks you must. fight back.”

Running away from a charging polar bear is – perhaps stubbornly – dangerous. A bear’s instinct is to chase prey and polar bears can run at speeds of up to 25mph (40kmph).

Important tip: Be alert and aware of your surroundings. Do not walk alone at night.

Churchill is known as the polar bear capital of the world. Every year, Hudson Bay — on whose western shore the town sits — melts, forcing the bears ashore. As the fall freezes, hundreds of bears gather here, waiting.

“We have freshwater streams flowing into the region and cold water coming in from the Arctic,” explains Alyssa McCall from Polar Bears International (PBI). “So here’s the first freeze-up.

“For polar bears, the sea ice is a big dinner plate – it’s access to their main prey, the seals. They’re probably excited for a big meal of seal blubber – they don’t eat much all summer on land.”

There are 20 known subpopulations of polar bears in the Arctic. It is one of the most southern and best studied.

“They’re our fat, white, hairy canaries in the coal mine,” Alisa explains. “We had about 1,200 polar bears here in the 1980s and we’ve lost about half of them.”

Fall The Gulf is now tied to the amount of time it is ice-free, a period that is getting longer as the climate warms. No sea ice means no frozen seal hunting platform.

“The bears here are now on Earth a month longer than their grandparents,” explains Alyssa. “It puts pressure on mothers. [With less food] It’s hard to get pregnant and keep those babies.”

Although their long-term survival is uncertain, the bears draw conservation scientists and thousands of tourists to Churchill each year.

We tag along with a group from PBI to look for bears on the sub arctic tundra – just a few miles from town. The team travels in a tundra buggy, a type of off-road bus with large tires.

After looking away for a while, we have a heart-stopping close-up. A young bear approaches and investigates our slow two-wheeler convoy. He steps forward, sniffs one of the carts, then jumps up and puts two large paws on the side of the cart.

The bear casually drops down on all fours, then looks up and glances briefly at me. It’s deeply confusing to see the face of an animal that is simultaneously cute and potentially deadly.

“You can even see him sniffing and licking the vehicle — using all his senses to investigate,” says PBI’s Geoff York, who has worked in the Arctic for more than three decades.

Being here in ‘bear season’ means Geoff and his colleagues can test new technologies to detect bears and protect people. The PBI team is currently fine-tuning the radar-based system known as ‘Bir Dar’.

The experimental rig — a long antenna with 360-degree scanning detectors — is mounted on the roof of a lodge in the middle of the tundra near Churchill.

“It has artificial intelligence, so here we can basically teach it what a polar bear is,” Geoff explains. “It works 24/7, it can see at night and in poor visibility.”

Protecting the community is the job of the Polar Bear Alert Team – trained rangers who patrol Churchill every day.

We ride with ranger Ian Van Nest, who is on the hunt for a stubborn bear that he and his companions tried to drive off earlier that day. “It turned around and came back [towards] Churchill is not interested in going.”

For bears that plan to hang around town, the team can use a live trap: a tube-shaped container, lined with seal meat, with a door that opens when the bear climbs inside. Activates.

“Then we put them in a holding facility,” explains Ian. The bears are held for 30 days, a period designed to teach the bear that coming into town to look for food is a negative thing, but does not pose a health risk to the animal.

They are then transported – either on the back of a trailer or occasionally airlifted by helicopter – and released along the bay away from people.

Cyril Friedlund, who works at Churchill’s new scientific observatory, remembers the last time a man was killed by a polar bear in Churchill in 1983.

“It was right in the city,” he says. “The man was homeless and in a deserted building at night. There was also a young bear – he took him down with his paw, like he was a seal.”

People came to help, Searle recalls, but they couldn’t get the bear away from the man. “It was like he was protecting his food.”

The Polar Bear Alert Program was set up around the same time. No one has been killed by a polar bear since then.

Cyril is now a technician at the new Churchill Marine Observatory (CMO). Part of its remit is to understand how these environments will respond to climate change.

Under its retractable roof are two large pools filled with water pumped directly from Hudson Bay.

“We can do all kinds of controlled experimental studies looking at changes in the Arctic,” says Professor Feiyu Wang.

One implication of a less icy Hudson Bay is a longer operating season for the port, which is currently closed for nine months of the year. A longer season during which the bay thaws and becomes open water could mean more ships coming in and out of Churchill.

Studies at the observatory are underway to improve the accuracy of sea ice forecasts. The research will also examine the risks associated with port expansion. One of the first investigations is the experimental oil spill. The scientists plan to release the oil into a pond, test cleanup techniques and measure how quickly the oil degrades in cold water.

For Churchill Mayor Mike Spence, understanding how to plan for the future, especially when it comes to shipping goods in and out of Churchill, is critical to the city’s future in a warming world. It is very important.

“We are already trying to extend the season,” he says, pointing to the port, which has stopped operating for the winter. “In ten years’ time, it’s going to be a shakeup.”

Climate change is a challenge for the polar bear capital of the world, but the mayor is optimistic. “We have a great city,” he says, “a wonderful community. And the summer season — [when people come to see the Beluga whales in the bay] – growing.”

“We are all being challenged by climate change,” he added. “Does that mean you stop existing? No – you adapt. You develop a way to take advantage of it.”

While Mike Spence says “the future is bright” for Churchill, it may not be so bright for polar bears.

T and his friends look out over the bay from a window at the back of the school building. Polar Bear Alert Team vehicles are gathering outside, trying to get a bear out of town.

“If climate change continues,” said Charlie, TK’s classmate, “the polar bears might stop coming here.”

The teacher turns to make sure the children are being picked up – that they are not going home alone. All part of the daily routine in the polar bear capital of the world.