SAW 28 WILD POLAR BEARS IN A DAY! Crazy Experience in Churchill, Manitoba On A Tundra Buggy [Ep.13]

Every year when the sea is frozen, the vast Hudson Bay becomes a prime hunting spot for polar bears to prey on seals. Right before the sea is completely frozen, the polar bears will gather around the shore and wait for their best season of the year to come. Along the Hudson Bay, there is an area that always freezes first. Polar bears know about this. That's why every fall, a large number of them concentrate in this place so they can get on the solid sea ice as early as they can. We humans know about this too. And that explains why land that's not even connected by road. This place is Churchill, the polar bear capital of the world. The reason why Churchill is the polar bear capital of the world is simple, it's geography. Whenever the temperature drops, fresh water freezes before salt water does. Yet the Churchill area is home to two major rivers, Churchill River and Nelson River. When the fresh water pumps from these two rivers into the Hudson Bay, the diluted water near the mouth of these two rivers freezes first. This makes the Churchill area and the nearby Wapusk National Park especially attractive to the polar bears, because this is a place that guarantee them early admission to the annual seal feasting festival. The best areas to see the polar bears in Churchill are the Wildlife Management Area and the Wapusk National Park. Yet to reach these two places, ordinary tourists must go with a licensed tour operator. Fortunately there are a handful of them in the town of Churchill, and they are all pretty good. I had great experience with the Frontier North adventures back in 2013, so I decided to get on their secret weapon that guarantee you a heck of an experience if you ever want encounter polar bears in the wild, the tundra buggy. Because the tundra buggy is physically located near the Churchill Northern Studies Center, we had to travel the same roads from town to the place you saw in the last episode. Ask me that question again, how easy is it to see polar bears in Churchill? Oh here it is, your first polar bear here. Good start. Closer. Oh if only the windows were opening. Here we are. You should be so friendly. Look at the baby. So cute. Oh there, oh my gosh. Look for the bugs. Oh oh yeah. Red fox. Oh they're eating a red fox? Is he running away? Oh okay. Red fox, yeah. We're done, we're done, we have to go back. Yeah we're ruining their appetite, geez. I'm gonna see a red fox. Wow, so cute. The water is not frozen, so they're all. Yeah they're back. Yeah. And then maybe a sheep. Yeah, sure. A mother and a cub. They heard male polar bears, they eat the cubs. So definitely probably not a male one. These polar bears were literally just by the side of the road. Eventually we reached the tundra buggy and boarded the beast machine. I know you probably hated my commentary earlier, I promise I'll be quiet. For wildlife watching, it's the best practice anyways. Unlike a full-size bus, wildlife could definitely hear humans talking, even with all windows shut inside a tundra buggy. To capture the best quality footages of polar bears. I'm not gonna shut the window, I'm gonna shut up myself. We passed by the tundra buggy lodge. This monster in the wild is a mobile hotel where you can stay overnight with wild polar bears. It does come with a steep price tag though, an average of 1000 US dollars a night. It didn't take that long for us to encounter the Churchill area's most famous residents once again. One good thing about the tundra buggy is that you could walk to the back platform for unobstructed views of these majestic creatures native to the great white north. It's hard to imagine that most of the Churchill Wildlife Management Area and part of the nearby Wapas National Park were once the site of a joint American-Canadian military base. Even the observation towers I saw back in 2013 were no longer there. The area has truly become a place that's designated with a mindset of wildlife's first. Soon we encountered another polar bear wandering along the shore of Hudson Bay. Not sure what do polar bears think whenever they see the port of Churchill building from the distance. You might encounter a mini version of the tundra buggy while looking for polar bears. This is the special unit known as Tundra Buggy 1. It was a partnership between Frontier North Adventures and Polar Bears International, the advocacy group you saw in the previous episodes. This specific unit is for scientists to study polar bears in the Churchill area. We followed Tundra Buggy 1 and then we found this. Tundra Buggy 1 stopped by a polar bear that was eating an arctic fox. Polar bears are curious animals. Instead of running away, the polar bear approached Tundra Buggy 1 and try to figure out what was this big machine doing in the middle of nowhere. After bidding farewell to Tundra Buggy 1, we continued our adventure on the tundra. At one point a polar bear heard us. The big buddy decided to stick its head out of the shrub. Not far away, there was another one walking towards Tundra Buggy 1 in the distance. I would say I was very impressed by the Churchill area. I've traveled to many places to see wildlifes but Churchill is definitely a special place. I have witnessed hundreds of beluga whales here in summer like I showed you in the previous episodes. I was already very satisfied with the polar bears I saw at that point. However, little did I know that this polar bear adventure was far from over. I went back into the Tundra Buggy for some tea. When I came back to the platform, I noticed three polar bears were running away from the scene. What was happening? It turned out the two polar bears we just saw earlier engaged in a bear brawl. Eventually, the two became good buddies. Not far away, a third polar bear was walking towards them. In the background, the three polar bears that ran away earlier can still be seen here. That makes it six polar bears appearing at the same time. We moved further into the Churchill wildlife management area. We found the other Tundra Buggy tour group that left with us from Churchill in the morning. Looks like they were also enjoying the company of Churchill area's most famous residents. We had no idea what was in for us ahead, but we were all very excited already. We found the footprints of one big polar bear in the middle of the vast wilderness. We followed the footprints and eventually we were led to another group of polar bears. However, these polar bears weren't that excited about our presence in their territory at all. Some ran away. The biggest one, presumably the owner of the footprints we saw, decided to move away as well. I know that's kind of sad, but one polar bear seemed to be very curious about us. It came our way. Based on the size, it was probably a young polar bear that just grew old enough to discover humans on its own. It showed a lot of curiosity of us and the Tundra Buggy. It even tried to bite the buggy's humongous tire to see whether it was edible. It also went underneath the buggy to play with us. Can you ever imagine a polar bear going underneath you and try to use its nose to touch your shoes? Then the other Tundra Buggy arrived, and our new friend's curiosity didn't just end there either. It went to the other buggy trying to greet another group of humans who were just as impressed as us. So do The days in Churchill are short in November. We started to make our return. Last time when I was here back in the summer of 2013, the plenty of daylights allowed us to go to the legendary Cape Churchill, part of the Wapusk National Park. We didn't see any polar bears, but the amazing views were good enough. After a full day of walking and playing, we were tired and so were the polar bears. We saw the family of three polar bears from the morning again. They too were ready to call it a day. They just need to hang in there for a few days more. Then they will be able to be on the solid frozen sea and kick off the seal hunting season. Our tour group had a discussion of how many different polar bears we saw on that day. Some say 33, some say 26. The number most people could agree on was 28. After returning to Churchill, I finally visited the Polar Bear International House. I spent some time talking to the intern working there and got to know more about how polar bears live, as well as how our activities are impacting the lives of polar bears in the Hudson Bay region. Of course, Merry Christmas! In the northern hemisphere, Christmas is normally associated with winter. When Christmas approaches, winter is coming. However, as the climate change is happening, winter for polar bears has become shorter and shorter. The duration of frozen sea has dropped significantly in the past decades. Dire warnings about how the Arctic might eventually lose all of its sea ice means that the polar bears will lose the opportunity to feast on seals every winter. They'll end up being hungry all year long and will starve to death. This will drastically reduce the number of polar bears, if not pushing them into extinction. While the sad reality is often how we blame others and other countries for not doing enough to reduce carbon emissions, hey, at least the need to curb climate change is an international consensus. If all of us can just do our parts instead of pointing fingers, maybe we can all make the Arctic great again.