UnBEARlievable Environmental campaigners carry 10ft polar bear on pilgrimage to conference

HEADS were turned in Runcorn and Widnes as residents caught sight of a 10ft polar bear parading through the streets as environmental campaigners made their way to the COP26 conference in Glasgow.

“Clarion” the 10ft bear crossed the Silver Jubilee Bridge as the group completed its Kingsley to Rainhill leg of the 306mile walk last Thursday.

The sculpture was created by designer and model maker Bamber Hawes and weighs about 37 pounds, meaning the animal is light enough to carry on a platform with poles.

Clarion is made from thin bamboo poles, willow withies and layers of heavy-duty tissue paper bonded with waterproof PVA.

Bamber and the group are aiming to reach Glasgow

with Clarion on November 1 in time for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), which is seen as a historic fork in the road for governments to decide how to collaborate on tackling the climate crisis.

The full walk is expected to take 26 days.

People in the areas Clarion passes through are invited to join the group along their local parts of the “pilgrimage”.

During the Halton leg, the group stopped for pictures with residents.

One member of the group told In Your Area that everyone in the area was “lovely”.

One social media user who saw the bear in Runcorn posted: “Not every day you see a polar bear in Greenway Road.” Describing the concept behind Clarion online, Bamber said: “I do not think of him as a friendly cuddly bear, but as a bewildered, frightened beast that is angry about what humans have done to his world.

“If he was a real polar bear he could run at 40km/hr. (25mph) and eat 45kg (100lbs.) of blubber at a sitting.

“As the world’s largest four legged predator, they have a range of up to 600,000sq km (250,000 sq. miles).”

Bamber said he “knows” that carrying a bear sculpture won’t save the world, the idea was partly because “he can’t think of anything better to do” and he hopes it will galvanise the will to tackle the climate crisis among people who take part.

He added: “If we are going to stop carbon levels peaking at 1.5 or 1.8 degrees (centigrade) it is only going to be done if we see the world as a whole not as individual countries.

“We can not do this huge task and not think of those in the most delicate climate positions as not being our kin.

“So far we in this country have only had unpredictable, uncharacteristic weather, floods and fires, this is because we live in a temperate zone next to the ocean.

“We are very lucky.

“But for how much longer, if the arctic melt speeds up, as it may do, we will start losing our coastal communities.”