Day 8 of the Grand Polar Bear Adventure

The weather is making our planned flight to Arviat, an Inuit community north of Churchill, look a bit iffy.  We’ll know Friday morning, when the pilots will give us the go-no go.
But our final day in Churchill was a wonderful one.  We were concerned that the high winds would have the bears hunkering down and becoming all but invisible, but that was not the case.  Not only did we see several bears – including a mother and two cubs of year (COYs) trekking across the ice, totally unfazed by the weather, and a male bear who did a great stretching show right by our Tundra Buggy – we also saw two Arctic foxes and an Arctic hare.  The foxes were unconcerned by the wind, even though we could see it blowing them around as they trotted across the tundra.  The hare was wisely curled up out of the wind next to a large rock.

Can you spot the Arctic hare?  It’s here, I promise! (C)WWF-Canada/ Riannon John
Apparently while we were out on the tundra, three bears came into town.  A CBC crew that is in Churchill with us was amazed by the fact that kids were happily playing in the exact same spot just a few hours later.  The community certainly seems to take living with these bears in stride.
We continue to hope for the best for our flight to Arviat – the community there is all set to welcome us, and we’d really like to be there.  Arviat is one of the larger communities in Nunavut with about 3,000 people.
Our plan is to give our international visitors from RSA a real experience with Inuit culture and to show everyone the polar bear-human conflict mitigation project that WWF is working on with the community.  Living with polar bears is a challenge outside of Churchill as well, but most towns aren’t as well equipped as they are here.  So WWF is working with the territory and the hamlet to help install everything from electric fences to metal food storage containers, and to train patrol teams to help ensure that the community is safe throughout polar bear season.
Hopefully I’ll have a first-hand account of that project to share after our visit – please keep your fingers crossed that the weather cooperates with us!