May 2020 BBC Wildlife 65
SARAH MCPHERSON travelled on Frontiers
North’s Big Five Safari courtesy of Travel
Manitoba and Destination Canada.
For the latest travel advice and restrictions
surrounding COVID-19, visit gov.uk.repositioning his rifle. But no creamy,
black-eyed head pops up, no furry body
shuffles into view.Tr e k t o t h e t u n d r a
The quest continues as we rumble out onto
the vast, treeless expanse of the Churchill
Wildlife Management Area in a Tundra
Buggy, a tank of a bus with tyres as tall as
me. It’s a dazzling blue-sky day, and the
landscape, pockmarked with mirror-calm
pools, shimmers under swathes of lurid
pink fireweed, bright yellow marshwort and
vivid green mosses. Geese and tundra swans
taking to the wing are the only movement.
Every pale rock looks like a bear.
Then, 100m away, one of the rocks lifts
its head. Standing among the fireweed,
it gives us the side-eye, then ambles into
the pink haze. “Bears have such sensitive
noses – they can detect prey from a
kilometre away,” says Neil Mumby, our
driver, as a volley of camera shutters
ricochets around the cabin.
This bear is a male, we think. He has a bit
of sag to his belly, a 3.5/5 on the Polar Bear
Body Condition Index, so he’s coping well
with the fast. According to Neil, the bears
have been in good shape this summer. The
ice formed early in 2018 and melted later
than usual, allowing them a valuable few
extra weeks of hunting time. Thus, though
the Hudson Bay population is in overall
decline, 2020 should be a good polar-bear
year, as the females are likely to be in better
breeding condition.
Amid the otherwise disheartening
prognosis for this icon of climate change –
something I know I am part of, merely by
being here – it’s a pearl of good news. We
spot three more bears before the day is out,
all in good condition, resting in the distance.
The ‘big five’ are in the bag, but we are
quietly contemplative that this, the star of
the show, has the least certain future.Holding Facility, known as ‘polar bear jail’ – a former
aircraft hangar outside the town. Inmates spend 30
days here, watered but not fed, before being airlifted
70km up the coast. Most will then continue north,
moving onto the sea-ice as it thickens.
Prior to the formation of the PBA in 1980 and the
opening of the jail two years later, a three-strike
system – “green, yellow, red, dead” – was used to
control persistent o enders, with an average of 15
‘problem’ bears euthanised each year. “Jail is not
the ultimate solution, but it’s the best we can do,”
says guide Paul Ratson. “We’ve become very good
at not killing bears here.”The polar bear ‘jail’ has
28 holding pens, and can
house individuals and
females with cubs.