In the Arctic, temperatures are rising four times faster than the global average. Journalist Christoffer Åhlén takes a trip out to Canada’s subarctic to find out how climate change is impacting local wildlife, and what a town like Churchill is doing about it.
I’m on a small propeller plane heading north over Manitoba’s boreal forest, watching early sheets of ice form and dissolve across the water below. Churchill, a tiny town on the western shore of Hudson Bay in northern Canada, doesn’t have a road leading into it—you either fly or take the 48-hour train. Touching down at the airport, someone mentions there were mosquitos here two days ago, which sounds absurd considering we’re in the subarctic. It’s late October, and the weather should be much colder.
On the short drive into town, our driver, Rhonda Reid, points out a large building—officially the Polar Bear Holding Facility (or polar bear jail, if you will). When a bear wanders too far into town, conservation officers try to move the animal back toward the bay. If that doesn’t work, it’s held temporarily in the facility without food, so bears don’t associate humans with reward. When the sea ice forms, the bear is flown out and released.
“It used to be that if you saw a bear, you shot the bear,” Reid says. “Now the goal is to keep both people and bears alive. Nobody here wants to lose either.” And as a Churchill resident since 1998, Reid knows what she’s talking about.
Churchill calls itself the ‘polar bear capital of the world’, and you can see it everywhere—bear murals, carved bears in gardens, and painted bears on the sides of pickup trucks. On the day I arrive it’s Halloween, and helicopters fly over the streets checking for bears before kids go trick-or-treating.
The town is on the frontline of a changing Arctic, where temperatures are rising four times faster than the global average. What’s at stake isn’t just a species, but also a way of living—for the bears and for a town that has learned how to live alongside them.
“Polar bears are a reminder that this isn’t a predictable place, and that sharing it requires attention and respect.”
- Brendan McEwan, local Churchillian
Amy Cutting, Director of Animal Care, Field Programs & Conservation at Polar Bears International, is traveling with us throughout the trip. The non-profit, founded by wildlife enthusiasts in 1992, has a long-standing presence in Churchill, working with scientists and local communities. She tells me that Western Hudson Bay is one of the most closely studied polar bear populations, partly because it’s one of the southernmost—with later forming and earlier melting ice—and therefore, one of the first places where the effects of warming is evident. There are 19 polar bear subpopulations across the Arctic, from Alaska to Svalbard to northern Greenland. Not all are declining at the same rate. But the direction is the same.
“In some regions, the ice still lasts long enough for bears to hunt,” she says. “But the overall trend is clear. In the 1980s, the Western Hudson Bay was estimated at around 1,200 bears. Today it’s closer to 600.” As the ice disappears, hunting seasons shrink. Bears spend longer on land, and more of them end up closer to town—increasing the risk of human-wildlife conflict.
The next morning, we drive to where the tundra buggies are stationed, just under an hour east, towards the Churchill Wildlife Management Area. The buggies look like something out of Star Wars—tall and white, built for terrain that isn’t really solid ground at all—and follow an old military road laid down in the 1950s. The tundra lies on permafrost, ground that stays frozen year-round, making this one of the coldest places on Earth. It is dark and quiet, open and exposed; everything that survives here has adapted to stay close to the ground. Scattered rocks dominate the landscape and small fir trees lean in one direction, shaped by the very strong winds. The anticipation is high. I squint into the distance, knowing that I might see a bear any minute.
We turn in an arc and someone shouts, “Bear!”. We all move from one side of the buggy to the other. Behind low-growing bushes, we see not one bear, but two—a resting mother and her curious little cub, standing on its hind legs. The mother lifts her head, scanning the landscape, alert and protective. I think about the male polar bears nearby and how vulnerable a cub is out here, even with its mother close. Male polar bears are known to kill cubs, sometimes for food when seals are scarce, other times because it brings the female back into breeding. As sea ice disappears and food becomes harder to find, this behavior is becoming more common.
“They’re conserving energy while they wait for the ice,” Cutting says. “We call this ‘walking hibernation’. Their entire rhythm of feeding, mating and raising cubs depends on the timing of the freeze and the melt.”
I’m here on a four-day tour with Frontiers North Adventures and Polar Bears International, traveling with scientists to learn how polar bear conservation works on the ground. We spend about eight hours a day on the tundra, moving slowly and stopping when bears appear. Their thick white fur makes them look almost gentle at a distance, until you remember that this is one of the most powerful animals on the planet, and that keeping your distance is vital.
In Churchill, they learn to give bears space and respect from an early age. Brendan McEwan, a Churchillian of Indigenous Métis descent, grew up watching over his shoulder on the walk to school, learning to be mindful of food and scent, and paying attention to where bears might be moving. He tells me he’s even come home to find a polar bear sitting in his driveway.
“I learned to respect polar bears because of their size, strength and the simple fact that we share this land with them,” he says. “Watching such a powerful species makes you more aware of larger issues, like climate change and sustainability. It’s impossible to ignore how closely their survival is tied to the health of the environment.”
As someone who’s lived here his whole life, McEwan has seen how the climate has changed over the past two decades. “Twenty years ago, when it got cold, it stayed cold right through until spring,” he explains. “Now we see more swings—warmer days followed by sudden cold snaps. That affects ice formation, stability and how predictable the seasons feel.”
“The point is the conversation and it starts at the kitchen table… Policy shifts when it becomes something people talk about every day. When it becomes a voting issue.”
- Amy Cutting, Director, Polar Bears International
For McEwan, polar bears are part of what it means to live in Churchill. They shaped how he learned to move through the land as a child and they still shape how he lives and works here now. “They’re a reminder that this isn’t a predictable place,” he says, “and that sharing it requires attention and respect.”
Despite Churchill seeing more human-bear interactions than almost anywhere else, McEwan hasn’t noticed a dramatic increase in encounters. What has changed is how the town responds. Improved waste management and bear-proof bins mean bears are no longer rewarded for coming into town. “We’re seeing a new generation of bears that have a different understanding of the smells around here,” he says.
For him, coexistence is part of everyday life. “It means doing your part individually toward a collective goal,” he says. “We’re fortunate to have the Polar Bear Alert Program and Polar Bears International helping support that work. When tourism works here, it’s because people listen to science, but also to those who live with these bears.”
In Churchill, research is dependent on Indigenous knowledge—generations of land-based observations, storytelling about past and present bear behavior, and community insights into coexistence practices. This helps document how bears and humans are each responding to the warming climate. Looking ahead, McEwan believes polar bears will continue to adapt as much as possible, but only if humans do their part as well.
I’m staying at Frontier’s North’s Tundra Buggy Lodge, located right at Polar Bear Point. A unique experience where guests can fall asleep and wake up with polar bears outside their bunk window. Each evening back at the lodge, conversations return to the same questions: When will the ice form this year? What does the newest data show? Outside, the tundra is silent. A polar bear could be roaming past the windows, close enough to disappear again without being seen.
Our guide, Jeff Higdon, had worked with Arctic wildlife for over 20 years before guiding in and around Churchill. “I came for the wildlife, but I stayed because of the people,” he tells me out on the buggy. Tourism, he explains, has to be done very carefully. The buggies stay on the same trails every year to protect the fragile tundra. If a bear seems stressed, they back up and sometimes leave completely.
“Every bear is an individual,” Higdon says. “They tell us what’s okay and that is something we respect.” He points to changes Frontiers North has made over time, from becoming a BCorp™to the use of electric Tundra Buggies. The newest fully electric buggy, EV Tundra Buggy One, was developed to support Polar Bears International’s field research and live outreach programs. It’s not a finished solution, but it’s an attempt to reduce tourism’s footprint in a fragile place.
On our final evening, I ask Cutting what we’re meant to do with all of this. Not just the bears, but the inevitable that is climate change. “People think their individual choices don’t matter. And they’re right, in a way… switching off light bulbs isn’t the thing that will save this,” she says. “The point is the conversation and it starts at the kitchen table. Most people care about climate change. They’re just not talking about it because they think they’re the only one who does. Policy shifts when it becomes something people talk about every day. When it becomes a voting issue.”
She stops for a moment, and then: “We don’t have to fix everything today. If we don’t get it right today, tomorrow is another chance. It’s never too late to begin. The worst thing is deciding it’s already over.”
After seeing the viral image of a starving polar bear in 2017, I arrived in Churchill expecting something very different to what I found. The bears here are declining, and the future is fragile, but it gave me real hope to see that many of the animals are looking healthy, conserving their energy as they wait for the ice.
Witnessing polar bears up close, and learning from the people who study and live alongside them, is both a privilege and a reminder that we have the responsibility to carry on these conversations at home. Change, as Cutting put it, doesn’t happen all at once. It happens when people start talking about it. Often, around the dinner table.
The writer was hosted by Travel Manitoba and Frontiers North Adventures
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Christoffer Åhlén is a Swedish writer and documentary photographer based in the UK. He’s been featured in The Guardian, and is a winner of the prestigious Portrait of Britain award. His work is unexpected, honest and never fails to place dignity on the subject.
