“Can I give you some polar bear advice?” asks Tee, a confident 13-year-old we meet during a visit to a high school in Churchill, Canada.
“If there’s a bear this close to you,” she says as she measures a distance of about 30cm with her hands, “make a fist – and punch it in the nose.
“Polar bears have very sensitive noses – it’ll just run away.”
Tee has not had to put this advice to the test. But growing up here – alongside the planet’s largest land predator – means bear safety is part of everyday life.
Signs – in shops and cafes – remind anyone heading outside to be “bear aware”. My favourite reads: “If a polar bear attacks you must fight back.”
Running away from a charging polar bear is – perhaps counterintuitively – dangerous. A bear’s instinct is to chase prey and polar bears can run at 25mph (40kmph).
Key advice: Be vigilant and aware of your surroundings. Don’t walk alone at night.
Churchill is known as the polar bear capital of the world. Every year, the Hudson Bay – on the western edge of which the town is perched – thaws, and forces the bears on shore. As the freeze sets in in Autumn, hundreds of bears gather here, waiting.
“We have freshwater rivers flowing into the area and cold water coming in from the Arctic,” explains Alyssa McCall from Polar Bears International (PBI). “So freeze-up happens here first.
“For polar bears, sea ice is a big dinner plate – it’s access to their main prey, seals. They’re probably excited for a big meal of seal blubber – they
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