Your Authentic Artic Experience

Over the last couple years I personally have received feedback from a number of you indicating that although Nunuk was a terrific resource, it contained out-dated and incomplete information and that it wasn’t a great resource for Tour Leaders.

We read you 5 X 5, loud and clear!

Over the last few months, FNA Tour Leader Angèle Watrin has done a great job and worked hard to breathe new life into FNA’s Nanuk Education Environment, thank you Angèle!

For Nanuk members, if required, on the Nanuk home-page there is a “Forgotten your username or password?” button that will send you your log-in details.

Updates:
- It’s all much better organized.
- New, vast array of resources for FNA Tour Leaders.
- New material has been added to the plant life and wildlife sections.
- The addition of FNA’s Polar Bear Safety Plan
- New section, “The Land”, detailing geology and geography.
- New section, “History”, details HBC, First Nations peoples and Churchill.
- New section, “Reducing Our Footprint”, details sustainability initiatives.
- New section, “Library” for scientific papers and media articles.
- A quiz that is randomly created to test your knowledge!

Nanuk is not etched in stone. We’ve now got in-place a great process to continually update it — so if you’ve got comments or suggestions, please let us know (and by us, I really mean Angèle).

Today the Canadian Tourism Commission posted the EQ toolkit for small businesses.

The kit in and of itself is cool. What’s really cool for us, is that for the ‘Authentic Experiencer‘ component of this campaign the CTC is relying images they captured during November 2007 in Churchill as guests on a Tundra Buggy.

These same images have been featured on huge banners and spotted on building sides in Berlin, Los Angeles and Tokyo. That is neat.

The group then made their way up the Churchill River on a two-hour beluga whale excursion where many adult beluga whales and their calfs were spotted playfully swimming beside the boat. The stereo hydrophones on the boat gave everybody on board the opportunity to hear the whales’ chirps to each other underneath the water! Very cool.

After a quick lunch, the FNA crew then participated in a Roads and Trails tour around the Churchill where they viewed the outside of the Polar Bear Compound, the Ithaca Shipwreck, and some wildlife, including an Arctic Loon on her nest, on the taiga around the Bay.

Here are some photos of the trip:

Belugas spotted from the boat

Polar bear spotted from the boat

The Prince of Wales Fort from the inside

The FNA crew

Polar bear spotted from the Tundra Buggy

Arctic Loon

Ithaca Shipwreck at low tide

During March 4th – 6th John Gunter was invited as an Industry Contributor to Travel Manitoba’s Sustainable Tourism Best Practices Mission.

The goal of the mission, which took place at Helca Oasis Resort on Hecla Island, MB, was for tour operators (Like Frontiers North Adventures) and other partners in the Manitoba tourism industry, with support from Travel Manitoba, to discuss issues surrounding sustainable tourism, how those issues affect Manitoba and how to integrate sustainable tourism practices into our operations.

As an industry contributor, John’s roles at the mission was to stimulate conversation amongst the participants, discussing FNA’s successes like our Churchill Recycle project and our support of Polar Bears International and their goals of saving polar bear habitat.

Here are a few FNA successes.

Environmental
- FNA’s support of Polar Bears International’s Human Impact Study.
- FNA’s brochure printing on FSC Certified 100% post-consumer fiber paper

Socio-cultural
- Our Churchill Recycle project.
- For our 35+ seasonal staff, when possible hiring local (community, province, Canada).
- When possible employing Aboriginal and visible minorities.

Economic
- FNA’s educational outreach and support of Polar Bears International and WWF-Canada.
- FNA’s support of media guests to our destinations.
- FNA’s developing and nurturing relationships with international resellers of our products in Canada’s north.

The main area in which FNA has room for improvement are our handling of grey-water at the Tundra Buggy Lodge. But stand-by on an update on this topic…

Up in Churchill, Dave Allcorn, FNA’s Interpretive Guide in the field reports that the sea ice is still lingering as the summer slowly approaches and the wild flowers are illuminating the tundra, its quite the sight!

Northern Hedaserum

Mountain Avens

Lappland Rosebay

Exploring the ice floe at low tide

Broken ice floe on Hudson Bay

Summer polar bear

ATTN Students!
The Tourism Industry Association of Canada and Parks Canada are making available $1000 scholarships to upper-year students of a full-time university or college program in hospitality or tourism with an academic focus or interest in sustainable tourism. Application accepted until Sept. 25, 2009.

Every few years the International Conservation Union’s Polar Bear Specialist Group, comprised of researchers and species experts from the five polar bear range states, meets to discuss issues facing polar bears. Friends of ours in attendance were outgoing chairman Andy Derocher from the University of Alberta, Steve Amstrup from the USGS, Geoff York from WWF-International and Robert Buchanan from Polar Bears International.

Last week the PBSG met in Denmark and as a result of their meetings have put forward resolutions in eight categories to address threats to polar bears and their habitat, and to better assess the effects on individual subpopulations over the next four years:

- Renewed conclusions of the effects of global warming on the Arctic and polar bears and urgent need for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

- A continued international study of the effects of pollution on polar bears and the interactions with climate change.

- Suitable forward actions for Canadian subpopulations based on the 2008 status report on polar bear by the Canadian Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC).

- Minimizing human-polar bear interactions.

- Recognizing current overharvest, recommends a new population assessment for Baffin Bay.

- Need for the collection of scientific samples from harvested polar bears in all jurisdictions.

- Conservation and increased monitoring of the Chukchi Sea polar bear population.

- Need for polar bear monitoring and capture range wide.

Click here to access the full report.

Accounted for in the Park Establishment Agreement from April 24, 1996 and since acquiring Tundra Buggy Tours in 1999, FNA has had the exclusive opportunity to host guests at Cape Churchill inside Wapusk National Park.

On October 19, 2007 the Wapusk National Park Management Plan was tabled by the Minister of the Environment and approved by Canadian Parliament. The new Management Plan made clear that after 2009, FNA would be required to participate in a competitive bid process in order to win the right host guests at the Cape. On June 19th, 2009, we submitted our bid to operate at the Cape Churchill during 2010 – 2015.

At about 10:30 this morning we were on the phone with Cam Elliot, Parks Canada Agency’s superintendent for Wapusk National Park and he communicated to us FNA’s was the winning bid to receive a business license to operate at Cape Churchill between 2010 and 2015.

Yay!

Thank you to all of you for your support in preparing our nomination and getting it out the door. Specially:

• Buggy Drivers and Tour Leaders — thank you for your timely responses providing us with your varied, relevant and impressive lists of accreditations. Wow!

• Jaime Dzikowski — thank you for composing Category 4(ii) Commitment to Regional Communities and thank you for organizing 32 appendixes and helping proofread, format, print, collate and get the proposal out the door!

• Michelle Manary — thank you for getting out butt in gear on Category 1(ii) Experience and for composing Job Profile Summary and Policy appendixes!

• George Crombie — thank you for your work on the Buggy Lodge grey water project appendix!

• Kim Milne — thank you for providing us the broad strokes of Category 4(i) Recruitment of Aboriginal Staff!

• Bruce Birchard — thank you for your critical evaluation and keeping us on-track!

• Bruce Birchard and Kim Milne — thank you for composing Category 3(ii) Return to the Crown!

• Laura Fabro — thank you for your help on formatting and getting the proposal out the door!

• Stephanie Burke — thank you for your help preparing the Itinerary appendix!

This is a big deal for our little company! Thank you all for your support!

Dave Allcorn has recently arrived in Churchill to fulfill the role of Summer Tundra Buggy Driver and Interpretive Guide and contribute around the Garage when he’s not in the field. In September, Dave will transition over to managing the maintenance of the Tundra Buggy Lodge.

Here is Dave’s brief report of Churchill’s Canada Day festivities (Thanks Dave!!):

the fire works were on June 30th at 1130pm and were really impressive in front of a pink sky and a frozen sea… the parade had a lot of spectators and participants this year, maybe because it was a clear day, even if it was only 3º Celsius, brrrrrr… I was warm inside “Buggy Bear” and I only made one kid cry, i got a little too close, he wasn’t happy… the Arctic Trading Company won the best float, and the Churchill Regional Health Authority won for goofiest float… the igloo was made entirely out of recycled 4litre milk jugs, the ultimate in recycling?

Lookout it’s a trap!

Buggy Bear with the Wazny girls.

Buggy Bear, Baby Buggy and a Tundra Buggy float.

Buggy Bear and Baby Buggy.

Buggy Bear on his way to Polar Bear Jail, maybe?

Buggy Bear: “Should we be sparring?”
Health Authority Bear: “Yea, I dunno, this is awkward.”

The parade ahead of the Buggy float.

The parade behind the Buggy float.

Arctic Trading Company – Prize Winner for best float.

Churchill Regional Health Authority – Prize Winner for goofiest float.

Canada Day fireworks behind the Complex.