Summer Sea Ice Good News for Hudson Bay Polar Bears

Scientists have confirmed what a Tundra Buggy® business in Churchill is witnessing: that due to colder-than-usual subarctic weather this year, healthier polar bears are being spotted along the west Hudson Bay coast.

We are going to have a great opportunity this autumn to fulfill our Tundra Buggy Adventure guests’ expectations of snow, ice and healthy polar bears,” says John Gunter, General Manager of Frontiers North Adventures in Churchill. “The last couple weeks, as polar bears have been making their way from ice to land for the summer, we’ve seen from our Tundra Buggies numerous big, healthy polar bears in Manitoba Conservation’s Churchill Wildlife Management Area, east of Churchill.

This year there is more ice on average,” explains Dr. David Barber, a Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science and the director of the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba. “Hudson Bay in particular has seen a very cold winter and essentially a late spring.

What we're seeing this year is an aberration compared to the long-term trend,” stresses Polar Bears International President, Robert Buchanan, who has been working with polar bears for nearly 20 years, “but essentially the late break-up of ice this year on Hudson Bay means the polar bears, which rely on sea ice to live, have been given more time during spring and summer to hunt and eat seals, and this has allowed them to gain important weight to live off of until freeze-up.

Frontiers North Adventures is known as an international leader in Canada’s sustainable tourism industry, providing amazing wildlife viewing programs in Canada’s north. The company generates polar bear-habitat conservation awareness through partnerships with organizations including Polar Bears International (PBI), a non-profit dedicated to conservation of polar bears. Groundbreaking initiatives from this partnership include PBI Leadership Camp and PBI Tundra Connections that feature polar bear species experts.

Frontiers North recently earned the opportunity to continue for another five years to exclusively host guests at Cape Churchill in Wapusk National Park. The operator has been honoured with Travel Manitoba’s Sustainable Tourism and Ecotourism Awards and is recognized by the Tourism Industry Association of Canada as one of the top three sustainable tourism operators in Canada. In 2007, Nunavut Tourism presented the company with an Award of Excellence for outstanding investment in tourism and sustainable development practices.