MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Winter 2020

80 That number has now dropped to one every 2-3 years—a major conservation victory. As Collins explains, there’s also no three-strikes policy; one large male named Lardass spent 17 of his 19 Churchill seasons in jail. After a few days in Churchill and then a two-hour, 20kph drive across half-frozen swamp in a Tundra Buggy—the all-terrain monster- truck-meets-bus invented by Leonard Smith in 1979—we arrive at Frontiers North’s Tundra Buggy Lodge for the main event: three days of polar bear-viewing on the coast. The lodge is a marvel of environment-adapted, DIY engineering comprising enchained high-end bunkhouses, lounge, wood-panelled dining car, kitchen, and staff quarters. Like the vehicles we travel in, a floor floating two metres above the surrounding landscape provides for easy docking—and a feeling of being adrift. To maintain ecological and safety separation, staff spend weeks out here never touching the ground. “It’s like a space station,” one tells me, as stars wheel overhead in agreement. We see our first bear next morning. Loading into the buggy in semi-darkness, a scoop of ice-cream on the tideline 50 metres away comes to life. One woman cries, having dreamed of polar bears all night. If emotions around bucket-list megafauna seem feigned, the notion is swept quickly aside by the genuine awe we all share. As a crimson sunrise lights the drama before us, the bear sits centre-stage, a strand of frozen kelp hung from its mouth. Our first interpretive lesson: polar bears don’t actually forage in the intertidal zone like black and grizzly bears. As Collins explains, there aren’t enough calories available to warrant turning rocks for tiny crustaceans, and the bears’ molars—a shearing array for tearing through seals— aren’t configured to extract food value from plants. Thus, speculation over their frequent kelp-chomping ranges from micronutrient scrounging, to maintenance of digestive health, to something akin to bored bears chewing gum. Like the quirks responsible for Churchill’s polar-bear vortex, opportunity to view them is afforded by a unique convergence— the low-lying, treeless coast and network of 1950s-era military trails crisscrossing it. Elevated above the terraqueous patchwork of ponds and shrub willow, the plodding, snow-white Tundra Buggies become predictable, non-threatening features of the bear’s environment without impeding their movements or impacting the ecosystem— prints of Arctic hare, marten, fox, wolf, ptarmigan and polar bear all parallel the trails. We spend hours watching bears wander, dig, and snooze from the buggy’s windows or rear deck in what feels like a fugue of astral projection but is very much human conceit—the bears well know we’re there, they just don’t care. We spot a massive male crossing the ice of a small lake. A metre-and-a-half at the shoulder and close to 500 kg, the animal’s weight is so well spread on racquet-sized paws that it can traverse thinner ice than a human. It ambles across, sniffs the air beside the buggy, then digs itself into a snowbank to sleep. Long periods spent doing nothing are key, as the animals can lose up to a kilo of weight a day on land. During the 1980s, average off-ice time was 107 days. With sea ice disappearing at the rate of 13 per cent a decade, however, that average is up to 130 days. By this point, in early November, Churchill’s bears have been ashore 135 days and will likely surpass 150—i.e., five months without food. Dr. Steve Amstrup, Chief Scientist for Polar Bears International, notes how sea-ice-loss adds up to a one-two punch of less feeding opportunity and more-protracted fasts. This affects not only reproductive capacity for females which, in any event, breed only every three years, but individual longevity that once compensated for low reproductive rate, since the sea-ice ecosystem (algae-plankton-fish-seals) delivers 86 per cent of the carbon reaching polar bears. The cost of this crumbling ecological house-of-cards is embodied in the tale of a female bear forced to leave disintegrating ice and swim 687 km over 9 days, losing 22 per cent of her body weight and a yearling cub in the process. Thus, the number of mothers with cubs is declining; those with two cubs rarer still. And yet… next day we see just that—three bears plodding through a snowfall. Suddenly, another mother with two cubs appears from the other direction, on a collision course. Collins considers this unprecedented. The bears evaluate each other from afar, sniffing the air. It’s like watching approaching magnets that ultimately repel; neither trio deigns to get closer, spoiling the fantasies of several in our group planning photo Christmas cards of four cubs frolicking. But it doesn’t matter, the sight is gift enough. And if conservation turns on the positive energy and deeper understanding delivered by observation, we’re all instant acolytes. LEFT The Polar Bear Jail outside Churchill. RIGHT The Tundra Buggy.