A Day on the Tundra with the Bears

Today is Sunday, October 31st. We went on a Frontiers North Tundra Buggy out of Churchill, Manitoba. It was 20 degrees Fahrenheit. We saw about 12 polar bears in 8 hours. We saw moms with their cubs and them roaming around on the Hudson Bay shores. On these shores they savage around looking for food and will even eat kelp and berries if hungry. They prefer to eat seals.

All the polar bears we saw were healthy polar bears. There is a Polar Bear Scorecard with a scale 1-5 on determining if polar bears are healthy or not. We looked at each bear and ranked them on the scale with our bear researcher, Doug Clark. If the polar bear is a 1 it is the most dangerous animal to be around. They will attack or eat anything that is food in there sigh They are so dangerous because they have nothing to lose including their life. You can tell it's a 1 because their ribs will be showing. A polar bear that is a 2 is small, but is just a little smaller than average. Then we've got the 3. The 3rd ranked polar bear is pretty healthy. All the polar bears we saw were at least a 3. The level 4 bear was fat and looked very healthy. The level five was very healthy and you could see rolls of fat. We mainly saw 3 and 4 level bears. The scale can be found at:

https://polarbearsinternational.org/meda/3585/polar bear scorecard 1paderweb.pdf=

This bear is about a level 4. You will notice a tag on the ear. This tag is meant to see where the bears are moving, learn more about them, and see how they migrate. When they put the tags on the polar bears ears, the skin removed is collected and they use it as a sample of the bear's DNA. This DNA is then put in a freezer and scientists can track their ancestors/family.