Churchill conservation officers dealing with summer polar bear population explosion

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This article was published 16/08/2023 (811 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Churchill residents are normally eager to welcome visitors to the polar bear capital of the world; this summer, however, the somewhat unwelcome visitors are the polar bears themselves.

Provincial conservation officers have been responding to dozens more calls for help this year in the town on the shores of Hudson Bay.

Because of the early ice melt in the spring, there are currently hundreds of bears in and around town.

“We’re not even in bear season yet and we’re up to 78 calls,” said officer Chantal Maclean, adding there were fewer than 20 calls at this time last summer.

The massive predators — often weighing more than 400 kilograms — usually don’t appear in numbers until October. The season ends a few weeks later when winter ice forms on Hudson Bay.

Last year, the ice formed on Nov. 10, and in 2021 it was Nov. 26, “so they will be with us for a while this year,” Maclean said.

Three calls resulted in the animals being taken to a holding facility, she said.

“All three were displaying food conditioning,” she said.

“If they continued to come to town they could have a negative interaction with humans… we hold them for 30 days to try to break the conditioning that humans mean food. Then we helicopter them as far as we can.”

Conservation officer Ian Van Nest said to keep track of the bears they’ve been in contact with they use a cattle marker.

“We mark them with green dye,” he said. “Then we know if we have dealt with them before.”

Photos provided by the province showed one of the bears, weighing 412 kilos, tranquilized and loaded onto the back of a pickup truck before being taken to the holding facility last week.

“Thankfully, once we release the bears we don’t see them again,” Maclean said.

“They’re not bad bears. They are just doing what polar bears do. They are hungry and just want to eat.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca