By Peter Ewins
Read our first update here.
This is Churchill train station (also the Parks Canada main office), where we took the 8 p.m. train south to Chesney.
(c) Peter Ewins/WWF-Canada
By Peter Ewins
It’s 0530 and my WWF-US colleague Rhys Gerholdt and I are with an ABC News crew from New York, heading up to Wapusk National Park and the world’s largest concentration of maternity dens for polar bears.
The recent science papers have sparked heightened public interest and concern for the trends and future prospects of these most southerly of the world’s wild polar bears.
Over the next week. we will be based in Wat’chee lodge in the denning areas, and hope to see firsthand how these polar bear mums and their cubs are doing as they emerge from the deep snow dens. WWF has helped support these long-term studies of polar bears in west Hudson Bay, so we are eagerly following these results and the experts’ assessments of the prospects for bears in this region of rapidly retreating sea ice.
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By Clive Tesar
A new paper published in Nature magazine suggests that reductions in greenhouse gases would be effective in saving polar bear populations from the worst effects of climate change. The report says that the bears’ arctic sea ice habitat is most likely to decline in a linear fashion, showing a direct correlation between greenhouse gas levels, higher temperatures, and ice melting.
Some previous studies had suggested that there might be a tipping point in the arctic sea ice, leading it to suddenly disappear once a certain level of greenhouse gases and temperature rise had been reached. One of the report authors, Steve Amstrup of Polar Bears International says the new conclusion means there is still hope for polar bears. Continue reading
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the ninth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
Our day starts early at Cape Churchill following a long day of travel and a late night getting the camp up and running. The temperature has dropped dramatically in the last few days and is now around -27 C with winds gusting up to 60 km/hr. This adds a wind chill factor of nearly -48 C (at -40, centigrade and Fahrenheit are the same). BJ Kirschhoffer, Director of Field Operations for PBI, and I still have a few things to take care of regarding the remote communications system at the Cape. If everything works as planned this morning, I have an 8 AM interview with Norwegian Public Radio. We head out in the dark on our Tundra Buggy to the Cape Tower, an old observation platform originally set up by Dr. Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service. BJ needs to connect a new battery pack to the repeater system and we’ll also deploy a small generator for recharging the system during the week. Continue reading
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the eighth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
Wagons ho! It’s moving day and the morning starts a good hour earlier. By 7 AM we are fed and aboard our tour buggies. It’s still dark as we head out on the tundra hoping for that perfect sunrise bear. And as luck would have it – we find him …
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The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the seventh blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
An exceptional two days of bear viewing in the Manitoba Wildlife management area. I’ll let the bears speak for themselves here:
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The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the sixth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
It’s the first day out for our new group and I am amazed and happy to look out on the Bay at first light – ice is forming well out onto the tidal flats! This is a stark change from just five days ago when we flew over this same area during our coastal survey and saw only open water. The Wildlife Management Area just east of Churchill is unique and protected for this very reason – ice forms and is retained along this part of the coast early in the winter and remains late in the spring. This is also why so many polar bears remain, or migrate into this area in the late autumn as they await their opportunity to return to the sea ice. Continue reading
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the fifth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
Today I’m joining a special group of visitors from Germany led by a colleague from their WWF home office. WWF Germany, in partnership with Wick’s (the company many of us know as Vick’s), has become a funding partner of the WWF Global Arctic Program and our polar bear conservation efforts. We are all very lucky to be joining Frontiers North Adventures for their final trip of 2010, and the only trip that is permitted into Wapusk National Park and all the way to Cape Churchill.
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The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the fourth blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
A snowstorm at last and it looks like winter may ultimately be arriving. Flights are cancelled or delayed and it’s finally looking a lot more like the sub-arctic.
As sometimes happens when you are at the right place and at the right time, an opportunity arises that was unexpected. Continue reading
The WWF Arctic Global Polar Bear specialist, Geoff York, is on a field trip in Churchill on the Hudson Bay, observing and blogging about polar bears. Below is the third blog from our ‘eyes and ears on the tundra’. Read more blogs by Geoff York.
By Geoff York
This year I had a unique opportunity while in town. PBI and Frontiers North Adventures premiered a new film by Zacharias Kunuk and Ian Mauro. The documentary was filmed in Inuktitut with English subtitles and is called Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change. Some of you may recognize Zach from his last award winning project, Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). This new work is a documentary recording Inuit elder perspectives on climate change across the Nunavut region of the Canadian high arctic. Along with the discussions on observed changes witnessed by elders and their concerns about the future, the film highlights some fairly direct and sometimes angry views around polar bears, conservation efforts, and the scientists who study this animal.
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