Canadian town uses radar to keep track of polar bears
CHURCHILL, CANADA >> - Along the frosty coast of Hudson Bay, hundreds of polar bears have been wandering for weeks, waiting for the wintertime sea ice to form so they can return to hunting ringed seals.
Until then, they represent a danger to the 900 people living in nearby Churchill - a remote, sub-Arctic town in Canada famous for the visiting carnivores.
The town is working on a plan to prevent conflicts between hungry bears and humans, using a new radar system that can watch and warn when a bear approaches and do so in a snowstorm and during the dead of night.
“The radar can see through all of that,” said Geoff York, at Polar Bears International who has been “training” the system’s artificial intelligence this year to recognize bears.
“It’s one more way to keep communities or camps safe.”
York hopes the system will be deployed across other Arctic communities where polar bears and people co-mingle. In Norway, a Dutch man was killed by a polar bear at a campsite in August. That bear was shot to prevent another attack.
As climate change warms the Arctic, the region has been drawing more tourists.
As sea ice breaking up ear
lier and forming later, “we’re seeing more bears on shore in more places and for longer time periods,” York said.
“We’re setting up this perfect scenario for increased human- bear interaction and increased human-bear conflict. “We’re trying to get ahead of that.”
Churchill’s last bear attack was in 2013, when an animal mauled a young woman walking home from a party. The woman survived after receiving 28 sta
ples to her scalp.
Mounted on the tundra where bears congregate during the migration to the sea ice each year, the bear radar, or “Beardar,” was adapted from a system designed for military use.
When the radar detects a bear ambling toward a human settlement, it will alert conservation authorities who then deploy a range of tactics from rubber bullets to helicopters to shoo the bear away.