Orphaned polar bear cub finds new family to survive

Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. Picture this, mother polar bear emerging from her den in the spring, new cub at her heels, they bound onto the tundra in Yilchurchur, Manitoba. Come upon another cub, but this one is alone, no family. The next time the bears are spotted by researchers, months later, the family has two, is now a family of three. It is incredibly rare, but researchers have Lisa McCall is Director of Conservation Outreach and Staff Scientist with Polar Bears International. Lisa, good morning. Good morning. This is a wild story in part because we've seen the video of this family, which, as I said, was two, now it's three. What do we know about why the polar bear cub may have been orphaned? That's a great question. We don't know a lot. We can make a couple guesses. It could be that its mother is deceased. She passed in some way and this cub was orphaned. It could just be that the family got separated. There's a lot of ways on the tundra a family can kind of lose track of each other. Maybe there's an adult male, maybe wolves in the area, we don't know. But whatever did happen, yeah, this cub was on its own and luckily ran into this other family and another willing mother. And so it runs into the other family, and as you said, a willing mother, and the mother polar bear takes the cub under her care. Why would the mother do that? Oh, that's the question because of course it's adding another burden to this mother. She's already got another mouth to feed. It's already tough out there, but we don't know. It might be that the maternal instinct is so strong in these bears. We know they make amazing mothers. Maybe she was just primed for it. We also know she's five years old, so this might be her first ever cub anyway, her biological cub. And so maybe she was a little more open to trying what it feels like to have two cubs. We're not too sure, but I'm sure this little cub is grateful that she was able to take him on. What have you seen in terms of how she's taken on the orphan polar bear cub? Yeah, like you said, it's so rare and special that we got to see this at all. We know through some genetic data that this has happened before, that there's been adoptions in this area. This is the Western Hudson Bay population. But after 45 years, this is only our 13th confirmed case, so it's so rare. And then to get video evidence or to see this in real life is absolutely incredible. From witness accounts, it seems like this family was just like any other. Mom is making her way along the coast with two cubs. It does sound like one stuck a little closer and one was a little more adventurous, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's biological versus non-biological. That could be male versus female or just personalities. So yeah, we'll see how they do throughout the year and if we see them again next year when they come back to land. What's your sense from what you've seen on these videos and what you've learned from people who've seen this firsthand is they're doing okay. They do. They do seem to be doing okay. Mom is a little bit on the thin side, but we would expect that for the time of year we saw her. This family spent months on land waiting for the ice, and now that the sea ice is forming again on Hudson Bay, we can see from her GPS tracking collar, which you can also see in our online bear tracker, we see that this family made its way up the coast and got onto the ice in early December, and right now she's right at the edge of the available ice. So that's a smart place to be. So this is a smart mom. She's at the edge, she's hunting seals, and she's teaching both of these cubs what it means to be a polar bear. What to you is most intriguing and interesting about this story? I abandoned bear, the orphan bear now has family, and here goes the family down the ice flow, as you said. But to you as somebody who studies this, what's so interesting about it? Right. We never get bored of seeing polar bears or learning more about them. I think it is the question of will this be more common? Will it be less common? We know that these bears in particular, these are some of the most southern bears in the world. This polar bear population has experienced about a 50% decline since the 1980s. We went from about 1200 polar bears to just over 600 in this area. We know that these polar bears here are losing access to sea ice, so they have less time to hunt seals than they used to. So it does make you think, well, this female, she was willing to bring on another mouth to feed. As climate change continues to change this habitat, will more females be more willing to take more cubs on? I don't know if that will happen more or would they be less willing as there becomes even more pressure in the environment to find enough food for the cubs they do have? It just makes you wonder also just about their social dynamics. It's so hard to get at, especially for any wild animal, polar bears. We don't know. What are they thinking? How are they communicating to each other? It just makes you wonder. How are they doing with the climate changing and everything that comes with that, shrinking sea ice? We hear a lot about that. But as somebody who tracks this, how are these bears, particularly around Churchill, doing? Right. These bears around Churchill, they are the best studied bears in the world. As I mentioned, we have seen a decline in this population. That decline is not because, oh, there's a bunch of bears starving to death or anything. The decline really is because there's more pressure on moms and cubs. It is now harder to be a mom. It's harder to get pregnant, to have cubs, to raise those cubs up into adulthood. It's already a hard survival rate for cubs, and now we're making it harder for them. When it's less predictable sea ice patterns, you're eating fewer calories over time. It's hard here. We do have 20 polar bear populations across the Arctic. Some populations are still stable. There's different scenarios everywhere, but we do know Hudson Bay particularly. It's near the south. It's got a lot of changes going on, and it's a tough outlook for these polar bears. We just have a couple of minutes left. You get to see these bears in a way that most of us don't, up close. Not these ones that we're talking about, what is that like? It's amazing. I feel very privileged to be able to do what I do. I've been studying polar bears for about 15 years now. I don't know a single person in this world who ever gets tired of seeing a polar bear, no matter how many. I've seen thousands of pictures. I've seen hundreds of polar bears. Every single time, it's a state of awe. They're so fierce and huge and tough, but they're so silly. They're so majestic, but they're so vulnerable. They've got all these different things going on. There's so many different things we think about when we get to watch them, and especially whenever we get to see moms with cubs. It's just beautiful every time. They're an absolutely amazing species. Yeah, we're doing what we can to keep them around for a long time. Just as we were talking, you said something about the tracking, and I dialed up online. There's a map where you can see where the polar bears are, right? Absolutely, yeah. Anyone can go online all throughout the year and see where some of these polar bears are. We work with Environment and Climate Change Canada and the University of Alberta. They put up to about 10 GPS collars on females each year in the Western Hudson Bay area, and they allow us to showcase some of these bears. You can go online and see where polar bears are. You can see all these different families, all the different choices they make at different times of year. In particular, this polar bear we're talking about today, this mom that adopted the cub, she is number X33991, so it's not the most exciting name right now, but X33991. You can go, yeah, check her out, see where she is, see where she's taken her cubs, and follow along with her journey. Fantastic. Elisa, thank you very much. Thank you. Elisa McCall is a Director of Conservation Outreach within Polar Bears International. You can go to that website, polarbearsinternational.org, to track the bears. This has been The Current Podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. in all time zones, or you can also listen online at cbc.ca slash thecurrent, or on the CBC Listen app, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening.