Yes, our polar bears get that close!
Recently we were asked to address a concern put forth regarding close interactions between polar bears and Tundra Buggies®. For us, this boils down to experience and expertise: We put a lot of trust in the guides with whom we work. It’s not blind trust, though; we have numerous accountability measures in-place. To help explore the topic, we’ve borrowed elements of the below post from our successful ‘business license’ bid (part of a competitive bid process) for the exclusive opportunity to host guests at Cape Churchill inside Wapusk National Park:
• FNA receives a high volume of staff applications and are able to be selective in our hiring, strongly relying on applicant’s references, passion and personality. For the role of Tour Leader, we require at least a bachelor’s degree in a related field (biology or anthropology, for example) combined with at least five-years related guiding experience. Tundra Buggy® Drivers require at least five-years of related guiding experience. Once hired, prior to entering the field, all field staff are required to successfully complete training modules on FNA’s extensive web-based learning environment, Nanuk (http://nanuk.frontiersnorth.com/). Nanuk is a proprietary tool created by FNA with input from a range of experts and is regularly maintained and updated for relevancy and accuracy. Before having the opportunity to work with our guests, field staff must complete further FNA on-the-job-training and orientation that includes job shadowing and mentorship from an experienced Tour Leader or Tundra Buggy Driver. We take very seriously the responsibility of hosting our guests. As a result, Frontiers North Interpretive Guides (Tour Leaders and Tundra Buggy Drivers) provide our guests top-notch guiding in a fun and educational manner. This is evident in our staff-retention rate, with many seasonally employed transient guides working with us for over a decade.
The experts to which we refer include many of the world’s top polar bear researchers and most reputable conservation groups. We work closely with individuals such as Dr. Andrew Derocher (University of Alberta), Dr. Steven Amstrup (Senior Scientist with Polar Bears International), Geoff York (World Wildlife Fund – Arctic Programme) and Dr. Ian Stirling (now retired from the Canadian Wildlife Service, regarded as the world’s top polar bear researcher). These gentlemen are no strangers to our operation and all have joined us many times on the tundra. Organizations with whom we work close include Polar Bears International (with whom we’ve just signed a memorandum of understanding) and World Wildlife Fund-Canada. We tap into the scientific knowledge from this extremely accomplished group as well, we rely on the traditional knowledge our staff and guides have amassed over the last 30+ years.
From our Wapusk National Park business license bid:
• FNA Relies on 30 years of successful experience conducting tours amongst the world’s largest land-roving carnivore, we coach our Tundra Buggy vehicle operators, mechanics and guides to respect the lands on which we operate, including the Manitoba Conservation Churchill Wildlife Management Area and Cape Churchill in Wapusk National Park, the two regions in which we’re permitted to operate. Over the decades we have determined successful operating procedures that reduce negative impact on the land and animals, our equipment and our guests. Our firsthand experience has provided us with a very good idea of what works and what doesn’t.
• Frontiers North’s Tundra Buggy guides never circle, chase, pursue or in any other way harass wildlife. FNA accommodated Polar Bears International’s support of Dr. Jane Waterman’s study to determine the impacts of Churchill’s tourism industry on polar bears. Our experience over the decades Tundra Buggy touring has helped us determine appropriate touring methods as verified by the Waterman study:
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/research/past-projects#human
• Our experienced Tundra Buggy drivers respect the ‘personal space’ of each individual polar bear.
At the end of the day there are no set limits on how close we can or can’t get to a polar bear. It’s not say that one day those parameters won’t exist, it’s just right now our industry is very well self-regulated. We work very close with Manitoba Conservation and Parks Canada to make sure we are honouring the resources made available to us: polar bears!
In practicality, we have an established network of trails on which our Tundra Buggies are permitted to travel. These trails total less then 30 linear kilometres. During ice-free months, west Hudson Bay subpopulation polar bears have over 40,000 square kilometres of terrain over which they meander. The bottom line is that if the bears didn’t want to hang out near us, they wouldn’t. We smell nice. Other than that, we offer no opportunity for the bears to pass on their genes and we don’t feed them. Interestingly, with ~900 bears in our subpopulation, we usually encounter approximately 200-300 polar bears per season, which leads us to believe about 1/3 of these polar bears tolerate us and the rest either don’t know about us or don’t care about us. Regardless, what usually happens is a Tundra Buggy guide will spot a polar bear, position the Buggy so our guests will have a good view, then we shut-down the Buggy and wait. Being curious by nature, more often than not, the bears approach us.
