The Frontier town where polar bears do jail time

Imagine leaving a bar at night only to encounter the world’s largest land carnivore, a polar bear. Maybe even two if alcoholic consumption is affecting your eyesight. Joking aside, this is the reality in remote settlements across the Arctic, where polar bears reportedly spend more time on land as sea ice melts due to warming ocean temperatures.

At the sharp end of this is Churchill on the Hudson Bay in northern Manitoba in Canada—the self-proclaimed polar bear capital of the world. Its 750 residents live with this threat yet also benefit from the tourism polar bear watching brings. A local bylaw there insists all vehicles and premises are left unlocked in case of a hurried need for emergency shelter. Yet the overall picture is more complex than a year-on-year increase in the bears’ presence around Churchill driven exponentially by climate change.

“Their greatest concentration starts around mid-October and continues until the bay freezes over, towards the end of November,” says Jef Burnard of Lazy Bear Lodge. “They congregate just east of Churchill”. The lodge takes guests there in supersized tundra buggies resembling monster trucks called Crawlers to see them during summertime.