What to Do When There's a Polar Bear in Your Backyard | Alysa McCall | TED

When you think of a polar bear,

you might think white, cold, cute, fuzzy, huggable.

Or maybe you feel a bit sad,

imagining a polar bear floating away on a melting ice floe.

Either way, there's a good chance that for you,

polar bears are a distant reality.

But think of those living and working in the Arctic.

For them, melting ice doesn't mean polar bears floating away.

It means the bears getting stuck on land and more desperate for food.

For them, polar bears can be a daily reality.

And whether this reality feels safe or scary

depends on how well prepared people are

to coexist with the world's largest four-legged predator.

After working and living off and on with polar bears for over 12 years,

I know coexisting with them can be a challenge,

and it will only get more challenging

as climate change forces our species to increasingly overlap

in the coming decades.

With my organization, Polar Bears International,

I'm focused on conserving wild polar bears

while respecting and assisting those

who share their coastlines with this carnivore.

To understand how to best coexist with polar bears,

we first need to understand them.

And I think one of the best places to start

is with one of the most common questions I get asked,

which is, "How are they actually doing?"

It's a great question.

It's simple, but the answer has some nuance

and can depend on where we're looking in time and space.

If we could pause time

and stop all the impacts we're having on the planet,

then sure, right now the species would be okay.

We still have about 25,000 polar bears spread across the Arctic,

split into 19 different populations in Canada, Russia, Norway,

Greenland and Alaska.

But obviously, we can't pause time.

The world is warming

and the Arctic is warming faster than anywhere.

If we did nothing to change our current path,

we could lose most of the world's polar bears

by the end of the century due to habitat loss.

Populations are experiencing changes at different rates

depending on where they are,

but ultimately all will be impacted

unless we collectively switch to cleaner energies.

So we're racing time to tackle climate change in the long term

and in the short term,

trying to keep as many polar bears in the wild as possible.

But in the short term,

one of the biggest hurdles these charismatic megafauna face is us.

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.

So what happens when ice bears start losing their ice?

They get stuck on land and they get hungry.

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 --

it's a big omelet --

or three 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.

Many people work and live across the north,

and some Indigenous cultures have centuries-old,

deep knowledge of polar bears.

But as the world is warming and bears are spending more time on land,

more people are moving north

and also spending more time on the land

and bringing with them more food and more garbage.

And they might not be so bear aware.

This is a rising safety concern for humans

who are always the number-one 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.

Now here, I should also mention that in parts of the range,

polar bears are harvested under a quota system

informed by science and Indigenous knowledge.

If I don't mention it, people can think I'm hiding it,

and when I do, they can be surprised that I'm not opposed.

It is incredibly important

that we protect the rights of Indigenous peoples

to practice their traditions.

And right now that practice is not a significant threat to the species.

Where we could see population-level impacts

is through climate change,

or if defense kills, which count toward quotas,

defense kills start rising above the relatively low quotas.

That's when I worry.

But people can't worry about conservation

when their lives are at risk.

So we need to help limit negative polar bear encounters

and support people in protecting themselves

with whatever tools work best for them.

And to help with that, we can provide tools that are non-lethal.

Luckily, non-lethal 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.

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 percent.

Churchill is also home to about 900 people,

but grows by thousands during tourist season.

And visitors do sometimes ask me,

"Do polar bears really come into town or is this some tourism ploy?"

Oh yeah, they come into town.

So this is from last fall,

which is in bear season, October, November in Churchill,

and the local woman had gone out through a living room about 4 am

and watched this through her window.

And no doubt she called the Polar Bear Alert hotline right after,

which is a real thing.

But you can tell how big they are,

curious and pretty rude.

(Laughter)

So 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's done.

So we need more options.

Polar Bears International is working on innovative technologies

that could help provide longer lead times

between when polar bears and people meet

or prevent them from meeting altogether.

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.

(Laughter)

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.

We also hope the tags could be used on other species

that maybe need some support staying away from us humans.

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 number one 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.

It's 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.

(Applause)