As ice melts, polar bears have to abandon their homes and move closer to us
MANOUSH ZOMORODI, HOST:
To wrap up our show, we want to talk about an animal that's being forced to abandon its home. Polar bears, as you've likely heard, are leaving the Arctic Circle because of climate change and melting terrain. Conservationist Alysa McCall explains that as the bears head south, that means that people need to learn what to do if a polar bear turns up in their backyard. Here she is on the TED stage.
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ALYSA MCCALL: So what happens when ice bears start losing their ice? They get stuck on land, and they get hungry. Polar bears use the frozen ocean for traveling, mating and hunting their main prey - seals, specifically high-calorie seal blubber. Polar bears can't outswim seals, so they use the sea ice to sneak up on unsuspecting prey. Polar bears need sea ice for sustenance and survival, period. Polar bears want and need blubber, but they're still bears, so they will follow their noses to fill their tummies, whatever that takes. But it takes a lot. Just one polar bear needs a lot of seals, and just one seal is equal to about 74 snow geese or 216 snow goose eggs - that's a big omelet - or 3 million crowberries. This amount of food doesn't exist on the tundra in quantities great enough to sustain a population of blubber-hunting ice bears.
So when polar bears can't find good food to eat, just like people, they'll fill up on junk food. And for polar bears, junk food is human food. And for a hungry bear, the best late-night, fast-food takeout can be their northern neighborhood's trash. But we have a saying in conservation - a fed bear is a dead bear. And this has major implications for coexistence. This is a rising safety concern for humans, who are always the No. 1 priority. It's also a concern for the bears because when a polar bear has a negative encounter with a human, it risks being taken out of the population in a defense kill, which is the legal killing of an animal to defend life or property. Luckily, nonlethal tools are available, and more are being developed, particularly in Canada, which is home to two-thirds of the world's polar bears. And one of the best testing grounds for tools is in the self-proclaimed polar bear capital of the world, Churchill, Manitoba.
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MCCALL: Churchill is home to the western Hudson Bay population, some of the best-studied and most southern polar bears in the world. In this region, the ice-free season is lengthening, meaning these bears are on land longer and have less access to calories compared to their grandparents. This does not mean all the bears are starving to death. It means the females are having a harder time having cubs. The cubs are having a harder time becoming adults. And some bears have just moved elsewhere in search of better conditions. As a result, this population has declined from about 1,200 bears in the 1980s to just over 600 today, almost 50%. Churchill is also home to about 900 people but grows by thousands during tourist season.
Polar bears are an economic keystone in Churchill, driving tourism and creating jobs. It's important Churchill protects them and their people, which they do through a wide variety of efforts. But one of the most interesting and effective is their waste management. Unsurprisingly, Churchill's garbage dump used to be outdoors, which was fine until it became a popular polar bear buffet. So this is a problem for the bear's health, but also because when they're on their way to the snack bar, they risk bumping into people. Polar bears are no more likely to actively hunt and kill people than black bears, but they are more likely to attack near towns, especially when food is nearby. So Churchill did the smart thing, and they've just moved their garbage dump indoors. Now the bears can't even get to it. They also installed residential bear-resistant bins, so no polar bear with late night munchies in this town gets any rotten food rewards.
Churchill continues to evolve their waste management because it's key in coexistence, but not everywhere can do what Churchill has done. So we need more options. Just one example - GPS tracking. It can tell us where, when and why polar bears move. It's critical data, but we've only successfully collared adult females. Adult males have these, like, pylon heads with necks thicker than their skulls, and they just pull collars right off. And then the subadults are still growing. And this is really too bad because the subadults, or the teenagers, often cause the most trouble - big surprise.
So we've started working with 3M, the sticky stuff company that makes Post-it notes, and they're helping us figure out how to stick a tracker to any bear's fur. These burr-on-fur tags could be a conservation game changer, letting us temporarily tag any bear that comes too close to a community. And upon relocation, we can track that bear and intercept it before it gets too close. This could help reduce dumpster diving and reduce negative human bear encounters, keeping both species safer. So there's different coexistence tools being worked on for different needs across the north. But we can't talk about conservation without mentioning one of the most important tools of all - education. If you are going into bear country, polar or otherwise, please get bear aware. Stay together. Secure your snacks. And carry a deterrent like flares or bangers or bear spray. Bear spray works, even in the cold and the wind.
But finally, the No. 1 most important coexistence tool we have is our willingness to cut carbon emissions and stop trapping so much heat in our atmosphere. But on that note, I have some optimism. Sea ice is very responsive to atmospheric temperatures. We can keep this habitat in the Arctic, but it will mean drastically reducing our emissions and eventually getting them to zero. Polar bears are fat, white, hairy canaries in the coal mine, warning us to act now. The faster we switch to cleaner energies, the better we can protect future generations of polar bears and people. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried. But action is the best antidote to anxiety, and I'm working to ensure climate change doesn't separate our species for good. But until then, it's bringing us too close together. Coexistence is the only option. Let's make it safe for all. Thank you.
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ZOMORODI: That's Alysa McCall. She's the director of conservation outreach at the nonprofit Polar Bears International. You can see her full talk at ted.com.
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ZOMORODI: Thank you so much for listening to our episode, Abandoned Places. It was produced by Harsha Nahata, James Delahoussaye, Matthew Cloutier and Laine Kaplan-Levenson. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour, James Delahoussaye, Rachel Faulkner White and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Katie Monteleone and Fiona Geiran. Our audio engineers were Josephine Nyounai, Neil Tevault, Josh Newell, Gilly Moon and Ted Mebane. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar and Daniella Balarezo. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.
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