In Polar Bear Country, Small Town Finds Its Place

Sgt. Ian Van Nest rolls slowly through the streets of Churchill in the Canadian province of Manitoba, stopping by a group of people standing outside a van and gazing at a polar bear on rocks about 300 yards away. "When you have people disembarking from the vehicle you should have a bear monitor," the conservation officer tells the group's leader. "So, if that's you, just have your shotgun with you, right? Slugs and cracker shells if you have or a scare pistol." It's the beginning of polar bear season in Churchill, a tiny town on a spit of land jutting into Hudson Bay, and keeping tourists safe from hungry and sometimes fierce bears is an essential job for Van Nest and many others, per the AP.

The task has become harder as climate change shrinks the Arctic sea ice the bears depend on to hunt, forcing them to prowl inland earlier and more often in search of food, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a group of scientists that tracks endangered species. "You're seeing more bears because there are more bears on the land for longer periods of time to be seen," and they are willing to take more risks, getting closer to people, says Geoff York of Polar Bears International. There are about 600 polar bears in this Western Hudson Bay population, about half what it was 40 years ago, but that's still close to one bear for every resident of Churchill.

Yet this remote town not only lives with the predator next door, but depends upon and even loves it. Visitors eager to see polar bears saved the town from shrinking out of existence when a 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 tourist spends about $5,000 a visit, pumping more than $7 million into a tiny town that boasts fancy restaurants and more than two dozen small places to stay amid dirt roads and no stoplights. "We're obviously used to bears so (when you see one) you don't start to tremble," says Mayor Mike Spence. "It's their area, too. It's important how the community coexists with bears. ... We're all connected." (Read the full story.)