Churchill, Canada: Polar bears wait for the ice as Polar Bear Week begins

The small town of Churchill in the Canadian province of Manitoba is in the middle of its most famous season. According to tourism agency Travel Manitoba, an average of about 600 polar bears roam the Hudson Bay shore between mid-October and mid-November, waiting for the sea to freeze so they can hunt seals on the ice. No road leads to the town, about 1,000 kilometers north of Winnipeg – visitors arrive only by plane or train.

From Nov. 1 to 7, conservation group Polar Bears International (PBI) is holding its Polar Bear Week. This autumn it plans to install the first Bear-vision system at Churchill's waste facility – a camera with short-range radar designed to detect approaching bears and send alerts. Together with Brigham Young University and the local Polar Bear Alert Program, drones are also being tested as a non-lethal way to move bears away from communities. "It's not easy to live with large predators as your neighbours," said PBI vice president Geoff York.

Behind the spectacle lies a worrying trend: according to PBI, the ice-free period on Hudson Bay is now three to four weeks longer than in the 1980s, and the Western Hudson Bay population has declined by about 50 percent since 1979. East and south of Churchill lies Wapusk National Park, covering 11,475 square kilometers – one of the largest known polar bear denning areas in the world.