By Praveen Gupta
From the icy coasts of Churchill in Canada to the towering glaciers of the Himalaya, the impacts of climate change echo across the poles. The Arctic’s iconic polar bear and the Himalaya’s elusive snow leopard – both apex predators in their fragile ecosystems – serve as the proverbial ‘Canaries in the Coal Mine’, by sending us clear warnings of a planet under stress. This dispatch from Churchill offers more than just a window into polar bear life; it mirrors the mounting climate pressures on the Third Pole, home to the largest concentration of ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic (cover story, Sanctuary Vol. 45, No. 8, August 2025).
Churchill – in the far-flung northern end of central Canada by the Hudson Bay, in the Manitoba province – is a small town (population approximately 800). It is best known as the polar bear capital of the world. Seeing polar bears on terra firma was beyond my imagination. But this summer I got to see them!
For almost 4,000 years Indigenous peoples (Cree, Inuit, Dene and Metis tribes) historically inhabited this area. In the early 17th century, colonial tentacles arrived through English and French fur traders. The Hudson’s Bay Company, chartered in 1670, the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world, monopolised the fur trade in and around Churchill and by the early 20th century, built Canada’s only Arctic deep-sea port.
Churchill – in the far-flung northern end of central Canada by the Hudson Bay, in the Manitoba province – is a small town (population approximately 800). It is best known as the polar bear capital of the world. The residents keep their homes and cars unlocked, just in case someone runs into a bear that can weigh as much as 800 kg. Photo: Amiya Gupta.
“Churchill was a fur trading village for centuries. It was unique in many ways as it developed a trading system that benefitted both Indigenous people and Europeans of that day – the French and the English competed furiously as early colonial settlers,” shares Wally Daudrich, eco-tourism champion and long-term Churchill resident. He went on to state that the resultant military presence to counter Soviet Union threats turned the coastal village into a boom town, but all that changed with the development of satellite warning systems.
The Western Hudson Bay population is one of the most southerly of all polar bear populations. The most recent survey, in 2021, estimated a total of 618 bears in Western Hudson Bay – a 27 per cent decline in just five years, and a continuation of a long-term downward trend. The population is now about half the size it was in the 1980s, according to Polar Bears International, founded, three decades ago, by a group of passionate conservation photographers. The polar bear, a marine mammal, moves onto land as sea ice recedes in the summer months. The residents keep their homes and cars unlocked, just in case someone runs into a bear that can weigh as much as 800 kg. Visitors are warned to stay clear of open spaces before dark. Despite a close vigil, bears may appear from nowhere. Given Churchill is on their migratory path. There are occasions when some of them must be trapped and lodged in a holdup. Do not be surprised if you see a tranquilised bundled up polar bear being airlifted by a helicopter headed towards wilderness.
“Initially, the polar bear was viewed as a nuisance,” Daudrich tells me. “There was very little activity of bears coming into populated areas during the military days. By virtue of the amount of activity, the polar bears generally stayed away. When the military left the bears moved in.”
Polar bears use sea ice as a platform to hunt their seal prey – and to travel, find mates, and raise their cubs. But climate warming is melting the polar bear’s sea ice home. NASA data has shown that the summer Arctic sea ice extent is shrinking by 12.2 per cent per decade owing to warmer temperatures. But this is not a problem for the Arctic alone. Carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions from multiple nations across the globe have only increased since the 19th century, and especially since the Industrial Revolution.
The impact extends to Antarctica, which is losing ice mass at an average rate of about 135 billion tonnes per year. Meanwhile the Third Pole, the Himalaya and surrounding high mountain regions and the world’s third-largest repository of ice and snow after the Arctic and Antarctic, is one of the most sensitive areas to climate change. The Himalaya could end up losing up to two-thirds of its glaciers by the end of the century if global emissions continue rising. (Read the Sanctuary Asia, August 2025 cover story for a deep insight on the Water Tower of Asia).
“News of polar bears walking through Churchill generated millions of dollars of free publicity before the internet and social media became the main communication method. Local businesses grew around the demand for local polar bear tours near Churchill.
There are several natural forces that create the apex of marine mammal life around here, Wally informed me. First, the proximity of Churchill to four river systems helps create a brackish water environment, which attracts fish and spawning concentrations, which in turn brings in mammals with high fat concentrations, including seals and whales. As a result, the apex predator occurs here in higher-than-normal numbers. The geography too is conducive. The large peninsula called Cape Churchill, in conjunction with the ice spewed out by all the river systems, causes the area to freeze for up to two months earlier than other parts of Hudson Bay. But it is interesting in how the species interact from the different biomes, concludes Wally.
The International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears was signed in 1973, and the late Dr. Ian Sterling’s pioneering work commenced in its wake. Kieran Mulvaney, a freelance writer who has written extensively about polar bears, credits Dr. Stirling’s groundbreaking work for its profound impact on polar bears and Arctic ecology.
Dr. Ruth Rivkin and Dr. Levi Newediuk, postdoctoral research fellows at the University of Manitoba, highlight the deadly impact of global warming on the polar bears of Churchill in their paper ‘Polar Bear Health, Aging, and Survival in a Warming World’. Polar bears rely on the sea ice that covers Hudson Bay each winter to hunt their favourite prey – ringed and bearded seals. Longer and warmer summers mean the Hudson Bay ice now melts earlier in the spring, and freezes later in the fall. Consequently, hungry polar bears spend time around the shore, waiting for the sea ice to freeze again.
Many polar bears spend these ice-free days fasting, or are forced to look for alternative food sources on land – kelp, bird eggs, and berries that offer less nutrition than seal prey.
Dr. Katie Florko, from Polar Bears International, explains that seals, particularly ringed and bearded, constitute the majority of a polar bear’s diet and are vital for Arctic survival. “Bears are lipovores,” Dr. Florko explains, meaning they primarily feed on fat, so vital to the thick layer of insulation that polar bears need to survive the Arctic winter.
When on land, polar bears lose up to a kilo of weight per day. The ice-free period around Churchill may range from 107 to 130 days. The mortality rate for cubs may now rise as high as 50 per cent, which in turn influences ‘recruitment rate’.
_with_cub,_Svalbard_C-1300_1759296943.jpg)
A polar bear mother and cub look curiously past the ice. A NASA-funded University of Washington study using satellite data reveals that sea ice is melting earlier in spring and forming later in fall across all 19 polar bear subpopulations, threatening their feeding and breeding seasons. Photo: A. Weith_CC-BY-SA-4.0.
As the Arctic becomes more ice-free in summer, shipping activity through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) will rise and may extend to the high Arctic, fear Dr. Ruth Rivkin and Dr. Levi Newediuk, who suggest that polar bears here are the most genetically vulnerable to climate change. Strong conservation measures are vital to the reduction of stress within these already-jeopardised populations. Ultimately, the survival of polar bears will depend on many aspects of their biology, not just their ability to cope with stress. If they adapt to warming environments, they will be better able to manage the stress of climate change. Drs. Rivkin’s and Newediuk’s work suggests that while most bears are not suited to warm environments, polar bears in the southern Arctic may possibly carry genetic variants that allow them to survive ice-free periods a touch longer.
Other mechanisms may also help polar bears survive sea ice loss, including their ability to travel long distances to more suitable habitats farther north in the Arctic. In this case, however, we should expect the iconic bears to occupy a smaller region of the Arctic than they currently occupy.
Regardless of which mechanism is at work, it is essential that we continue monitoring the health of polar bears. Reducing emissions and minimising the effects of climate change is undoubtedly the most effective strategy for the survival of these majestic animals.
“Across the world, we are more deeply connected with others than most of us realise – and those connections can make a real difference when it comes to action on climate change… Your neighbour may not care about polar bears, but extreme weather events, rising home insurance costs, climate impacts on winter sports, or a secure future for their children and grandchildren may resonate instead,” Christa Wright, Executive Director of Polar Bears International, asserts.
Alyssa McCall, staff scientist and director of conservation outreach at Bears International, calls them ‘fat white hairy canaries in the coal mine’ (see box on page 78). Over in the Third Pole, the snow leopard is the ‘Canary in the Coal Mine’. In her TED Talk in February 2023, she explains how sensitive sea ice is to human-caused climate warming. If only we could urgently cut down our greenhouse gas emissions and maintain the temperature rise below 1.5 C we could mitigate this risk, too.
Despite all the climatic changes, native wisdom cannot be ignored. “We explored how Indigenous people in the region coexisted with polar bears in the past, how they live with them in the present, and how they envision coexistence in the future,’’ shares Kt Miller, a scholar in Indigenous knowledge, in conversation with Georgina Berg – a Cree Elder and Indigenous Knowledge Keeper in Churchill.
Wally Daudrich is more optimistic: “I have seen our local population fluctuate over almost five decades as we see volcanoes and other natural events affect the temperature of our summers. The overall changes I see are not alarming me. I also see a number of behaviour adaptations from the bears that allows them to successfully hunt each summer.”
But then, Churchill is not just about polar bears. Rob Watson, an outstanding guide for over four decades, reminds my son and me that it is about a ‘trifecta’: bears, belugas (a story unto itself), and northern lights (under a clear sky you can witness the heavenly drama 300 nights a year). He reckons the chances of success in seeing all three is 20 per cent. At 100 per cent one should count one’s blessings.
If you look to spot polar bears on the Churchill peninsula from the waterfront in the summer months – you won’t miss the playful friendly beluga whales splashing around your boat. Kayakers will tell you how they are drawn to whistling humans, and may occasionally give your kayak a gentle push.
In the stillness of this distant land, you are more likely to be receptive to signals from nature as silence descends. The delayed return of sea ice is an anthropogenic misadventure. Beluga demographics can handle migrant orca onslaughts but not the noxious muck that keeps ending up in the magical confluence of four pristine rivers and Hudson Bay – from far-flung sources. And the remarkable starry nights that beckon the aurora ought to be an inheritance of one and all as darkness descends every night.
Oscar Wilde gave us some good advice: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,”
Praveen Gupta is a former insurance CEO. He believes insurers have a critical and urgent role to play in nurturing our environment. Europe-based ‘illuminem’, which has emerged as the world’s largest and premier expert network in sustainability, adjudged Praveen as “Most read in Climate Change 2024”.
_with_cub__Svalbard_C-1920.jpg)