For isolated communities at the top of the world, keeping polar bears out of town is key to coexistence. That can mean patrolling for the animals by snowmobile or four-wheeler, shooing them away with spotlights or hazing them with beanbag shotguns.
, forcing the bears to spend more time on land, the number of encounters between people and bears is on the rise, researchers say. Raising awareness and improving ways to keep both bears and people safe has become imperative.
Another Hudson Bay town — Churchill, in northeastern Manitoba — has had a bear alert program for decades and has turned the animals into a tourist attraction. There, wildlife agents and police patrol by helicopter and by ground to protect trick-or-treaters on Halloween. Problem bears are captured and kept in an air-conditioned “bear jail” until the ice freezes up and they can be transported out to where they can find natural prey such as seals.
The North Slope has patrols on standby in case bears come close; three villages have active patrols now, Hepa said.In Kaktovik in 2014, a patroller shooed away a polar bear that had gotten into the entryway of an 81-year-old woman’s home, where it was feeding on a drum of seal oil. The woman had hidden inside and was unharmed.
Wales began a polar bear patrol in 2014 with the help of the World Wildlife Fund, which has supported the creation of several such programs in far northern communities across the globe. But the local program became inactive due to a confluence of factors — including the COVID-19 pandemic, the relative lack of bears and the recent death of its leader, Clyde Oxereok.
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