Polar Bear

'In Northern Canada isolated communities are under siege from polar bears.'

It was like a scene out of a horror movie, everyone was screaming and shooting guns.

You cannot imagine how terrifying that would be.

'But when these protected species attack people...' There's some blood-tinged snow over there so this must be the spot.

'..the hunters become the hunted.

My name is Mark Evans.

I'm a veterinary scientist with a personal interest in conflict between humans and animals.'

You can see him start to move his head.

It's time for us to get out of here.

'I'm here to work with those on the front line...' These are amazing images.

'..and use the latest technology (Roaring) ..to detect and deter bears... (Cracker shell whistles) ..in a bid to keep both people and polar bears safe.'

'On Canada's Hudson Bay sits the small town of Churchill.

It's been dubbed the "polar bear capital" of the world.

One of the few places where tourists are guaranteed a close encounter with the world's largest land predator.

But living so close to these huge bears is dangerous.

And there's one night of the year when Churchill's residents are most wary - Halloween.'

- (Dog barking) (BOY) Oh, my God... 'The streets are full of trick or treaters.

This is the middle of a six-week period when polar bear numbers outside town are at their greatest.

Tonight more than 30 heavily-armed locals form a tight security cordon.

The bears are smart.

He'll sneak in along the gully, along the hill, and through the bushes to make it in.

And what he's doing is, he's not sneaking to me.

He's trying to sneak past me.

'The man in charge of keeping Churchill safe is confident the children can enjoy their ghoulish fun without fear of attack.'

Just so you know, of all the Halloweens in at least the 20 last years there's yet to be a bear in town during trick or treat time.

But this Halloween Churchill's luck is about to run out.

The harrowing story is on the morning news.

A Churchill man attacked by a polar bear is recovering tonight in a Winnipeg hospital.

He's one of two people injured early this morning.

It's the second attack in as many months and it's left people shaken.

(MARK) 'I arrived in Churchill within hours of the incident.'

In the early hours of the morning, a girl was bitten on the leg.

Somebody came out to help her.

They were bitten as well.

I'm going straight there to find out more.

At 5am Erin Greene was walking home from a Halloween party when a polar bear attacked ripping open her scalp and ear.

A 69-year-old local man who went to intervene was so badly mauled he had to be airlifted to a hospital.'

A neighbor witnessed this nightmare unfold.'

When I woke up and I looked out the window, everyone on the street, lights were on.

Everybody was out on their porches screaming.

Like a scene out of a horror movie.

Everyone was screaming, everyone was shooting guns.

What's the kind of feeling in the community now?

Everyone's very upset and it makes you realize, you know, how careful you have to be when you're walking around, at night especially.

'It was local teenager Didier Foubert-Allen who came to the rescue.'

The guy he was just being pounced on, like, it was just slamming on top of him and swatting him around.

After my tenth shot he got off of him and he walked about maybe... ten feet off of him.

And...

I shot the bear twice and you could see that the bear arched its back and then it went back on top of him again.

Forgot to mention, but I was dressed in nothing but my boxers at that point.

And I had no shoes on and I was shooting off my deck.

So I ran back inside, put my shoes on and ran into the truck.

Drove right at the bear and I was honking, and I turned my high beams on.

And I was honking at it and then it ran off.

So this is the actual street on which it happened and it's amazing because that's like the main road through Churchill.

It's a big wide street, there's street lights.

There's some blood-tinged snow over there so this must be the spot.

Incredible.

The bear was considered so dangerous it was tracked down and shot dead.

At the end of the day polar bears see us as essentially one thing - a meal.

'The mauling is a stark reminder of the danger posed by these powerful predators.

Polar bears are stealth killers capable of bursts of speed up to 25 miles an hour.

They use strong, two-inch-long claws to subdue their prey.

Adult bears can take on large walruses weighing up to a ton.

So for an unarmed human surviving a sustained attack is often pure luck.

Two months ago Garett Kolsun escaped an attack in Churchill by an adolescent male bear.

This bear was captured rather than shot and brought to the nearest zoo.

Garett hasn't seen the animal since they were face-to-face on the night of the attack.'

I'm sure glad I'm on this side of the fence, I'll tell you that much.

Was it that kind of distance away when you first saw him in Churchill?

It was further... it was further than that.

'Garett was walking home late at night after visiting friends when he spotted a movement out of the corner of his eye.'

I turned my head and looked, and I could see a polar bear that was charging me.

And it was going full tilt towards me.

And I didn't make it much more than ten steps before this polar bear caught me, bit my left hip.

And as it grabbed a hold of me it kind of turned me, and I spun and I started yelling and screaming at it.

At that point, the bear kind of reared up a bit and swatted at me and hit me.

'The bear inflicted deep puncture wounds from the bite and clawed Garett across the chest ripping his clothing and flesh.

He survived thanks to a remarkable stroke of luck.'

I was feeling in my pockets and my jacket and there was nothing, so I felt my phone and turned it on, and then immediately the screen lit up.

And I just stuck the phone in its face.

It backed up.

As soon as it did, I decided to run around the corner of the building, and just ran as far as I could, as fast as I could, yelling for help.

Do you think this bear was hell-bent on killing you?

I feel like it was... it wanted to kill me and eat me.

The way it was running...

It was just charging full tilt, it didn't stop.

I was lucky, that's for sure, very lucky.

'It's not just Churchill with a polar bear problem.

In the weeks before the sea freezes this entire coastline is under siege.

During the bitter winter months the bears spread out over the frozen Hudson Bay hunting seals.

But by June or July currents draw the last of the melting ice to the south of the Bay and with it over a thousand bears.

On land they begin to migrate north along the coast, drawn by instinct to places where the ice will form first.

After a long trek many end up in Churchill while others continue north.

200 miles further along their migration route they reach the town of Arviat.

This is where I've been invited to help work on the problem.

On the outskirts of Arviat I spot bears on the shoreline.

One is testing the ice, eager to hunt seals, but the ice is still too thin.'

The bears have been on land over summer.

They're hungry and they are desperate to get back onto the sea ice so they can hunt again.

So it's right now while they congregate here waiting for the Hudson Bay to freeze over again that most of the problems occur.

'Because of global warming the time these bears spend on land waiting for the ice to form is increasing - exacerbating the conflict with humans.'

Their fur is incredible at being able to just shed water as soon as they come back onto land.

You are amazing!

It's now walking over directly towards Arviat.

We'll have to keep an eye on it to see whether it actually makes it into town.

'Arviat is a traditional Inuit hunting town of two and a half thousand people, a third of which are children.

Keeping them safe is difficult.

The town is flanked by wild tundra and the Hudson Bay, making it vulnerable to polar bear incursions from any side.

Even the local school is only 300 meters from the wilderness.

The Inuit have lived side by side with polar bears for centuries, but the traditional way of life has changed.

Hunting used to be an important rite of passage, but is now strictly limited here.

Locals say this has resulted in more bears approaching town.

Recently a bear stalked two children in Arviat to within just a few yards, before it was spotted and shot dead.

I'm here to see if I can help devise new ways of keeping the town and its children safe.

All Arviat has at the moment is two snow-mobile-riding wildlife officers, armed with shotguns.

I'm keen to check the scale of the problem and see if they want to try some new ideas.'

So how often, Jonathan, do you see polar bears around the village?

Well, on a busy night we could probably be deterring up to... you know, seven to ten different bears.

It seems like the bears are getting a bit more bold and brave, and approaching communities more and increasing in number.

So how does that affect life in the village then, because you have a lot of children here.

It affects them quite a bit because they can't play out as long or they have to really watch out, like, due to fear of bears.

'Calls about menacing polar bears can come at any time.'

- That truck that just went here?

- Yeah.

It went to go...

There's a bear approaching and going into town.

'Joe and Jonathan need to react fast.

They respond to as many as ten incidents a day in peak season.

And each can rapidly escalate.'

Oh, they're there.

They're over there.

They're here.

There's two.

There's a female and a cub.

We're only just on the outskirts of town and it's as brazen as you like.

There's a whole team of sled dogs tied up that are going absolutely mental.

Mum and the cub, a really little cub... - (Barking) - ..are chowing down... ..on what I can only assume is dog food.

'The outskirts of town is dotted with sled dog pens and they're often the first places bears approach.

Just a week ago a dog here was killed and eaten by a bear.'

Ooh, she's snapped.

(Barking) Okay, let's see what happens now.

He's got his gun out.

'Wildlife officer Jonathan is first on the scene, armed with rubber bullets.

(Gunshot) - Okay, that was... - (Gunshot) ..that was a shot in the ass.

- She doesn't wanna go.

- (Gunshot) (Barking continues) (Gunshot) (Gunshot) - She's coming... - (Gunshot) She's now moving.

She's getting to the edge of the fence now.

She just walked straight through it, so did the cub.

(Barking continues) And is that electric fence on or off?

- On.

- It's on!

And she and the cub walked straight through!

Yeah, the very determined ones, get through.

This is what we fire, to deter the bear.

It's a 37mm rubber baton.

Okay.

So that's gonna hurt, isn't it?

It's designed for... - Human beings.

- Humans.

Yes.

- Okay.

- Crowd control.

- Is it?

- We use it for polar bears.

- And generally when you do that... - Yeah.

..do they get hit and they just disappear?

They're gone?

They run off right away with this one.

'Joe does have plans for an alternative to rubber bullets - feeding bears out on the tundra to keep them away from town.

But it's a controversial idea and his permits haven't been issued yet, so in the meantime I wanna see what I can do.'

The more help we get the better.

The more ideas, more anything that we could try out to decrease the number of bears going around here and decrease the number of bears being shot in defense.

'There are two problems to overcome.

Detecting polar bears before they can become a threat, and deterring them if they get too close.

And I think technology might be the key.

The first thing I'm gonna try is an aerial drone.

(Whirring) It could beam back live images allowing Joe to safely scan large areas for approaching bears.'

- That's good?

- All is happy.

'Out on the tundra the temperature has dropped to 18 degrees below zero.'

Oh, it's cold.

My fingers.

The purpose of doing all this, to use these drones - a number of reasons really.

The first is to try and map out where the polar bears are around Arviat.

In the longer term, what will be cool to see is whether smaller versions of this big one - and we've got a couple of little ones with us - could be used potentially by the rangers to be able to use as a kind of early-earning system when bears are coming towards the village.

But that's a kind of few steps off yet.

'This is the first time drones have been used in Arviat and wildlife officer Jonathan wants to see how it works.'

(Whirring) Just coming to the edge of the ridge.

I'm gonna come back, the battery's shot.

'But it's not long before the drone is back on the ground.

The cold is too much for the batteries.'

That was quick.

This really puts it to the test in these conditions.

Particularly batteries.

I mean, even in our own filming gear the batteries just drain so rapidly and you just can't get power out of them.

Mark, I think I'll stick to a snowmobile and a shotgun!

- Yeah.

- (Laughter) Listen, give us a chance!

You're not sticking to your snowmobile and shotgun just yet.

Not until I've tried a few things first with you.

'I'm gonna try again with a smaller drone.

It should have a longer range and better battery life.'

The wind is building up now.

These are very, very difficult conditions, so the kind of perfect ultimate test for these drones.

- This is... - Go left.

Follow the shoreline to the left, your left.

These are amazing images.

I can't even see the drone any more but we've got ice forming in huge great clumps here.

- Bear!

- Where?

- I just flew over it.

- Just flew over it.

- I'll do a pass.

- Wow, we spotted a bear.

- You're out of visual, I can't see you anymore.

- That's fine.

(Low chatter) We've lost the drone.

We cannot see it.

(Whirring) 'The extreme weather of Northern Canada is just too much for these drones.

I'll need to go back to the drawing board.

I want to try another piece of technology - a thermal imaging camera.

It could help detect bears further out of town especially at night.

I'm gonna scan the coast and see if I can pick up any animal heat signatures.'

That's all powered up.

Let's just check that is working.

Ha-ha-ha.

They look like polar explorers.

Which kind of they are, look.

Right.

I tell you what, this camera is absolutely brilliant for picking up foxes.

Hee-hee.

There you are, little fella.

I got you!

Such a cool camera this.

It doesn't look as if there are any bears out there, but obviously...they are brilliantly thermally insulated.

'The camera works well picking up arctic foxes but I don't see any bears on my patrol.

I've not had much luck with my early warning technology.

The next day the urgency of finding new ways to keep people safe is apparent.

A bear has approached a house and been chased off by locals.'

- Big male, is it?

- A pretty big one.

What the community does quite often they deter the bears away by themselves.

- Do they?

- Yeah.

It's a dangerous thing to do, though.

It's hard to imagine, isn't it, when you see a big polar bear like this asleep on the ice, that these animals cause so many problems for local people.

But... it's not the bears' fault.

They don't really wanna be on land.

They wanna be out on the sea ice hunting seals, which is where they belong.

'Locals say bears are becoming so used to the sight of people and cars they're not longer afraid to enter town.

The head of the local Hunters and Trappers Organization, blames this on an influx of tourists wanting to see polar bears in nearby Churchill.'

Because of the tourists in Churchill polar bears are not afraid of human beings any more.

They should be left as wild.

Not getting close to human beings.

That's what we think.

They're getting too close.

'I'm returning to Churchill to see for myself how tourism has affected bear behavior.

A local tour guide, Kelsey Eliasson, has agreed to show me around.'

Safe to get out?

Yeah, I think so.

I'll just jump out first and then... - Yeah, you can jump out.

- Yep.

'Churchill's population can double at this time of year with all the polar bear tourists.'

It feels very like a kind of African safari.

You know, where if you wanna find a lion, you don't look for a lion, you look for a microbus.

Some days it's like that.

Check where the buggies are and look for the bear.

So what's the impact of these massive vehicles and large numbers of tourists on the bears' behavior?

With some bears, they have their first encounter and, you know, you can't make a sound, you can't move.

Like you have to let... let it all be on their terms.

Then the second time their curiosity kinds of wins out.

And then the third time, you know, it just gets... You still have to be respectful, but it's a lot easier.

'In Churchill there are up to 200 incidents of polar bear human interaction every year.

Studies have shown that bears seek out cooking smells from tundra hotels and it's clear that tourists push their luck trying to get close to the predators.

I can't help thinking that the people of Arviat might have a point about the impact of polar bear tourism.'

(Shocked chatter) (Laughter and chatter) I've got a rubbish sense of smell and nothing like as good as a polar bear's, obviously, but I'm beginning to salivate now, because I can smell a gorgeous fry up.

And the smell's coming from that extractor on a restaurant roof.

So imagine for a polar bear that's hungry, it's going to attract them in, isn't it?

Surely.

And maybe it's just impossible, you know, this time of year all these restaurants are working flat out.

All these odors going out into the atmosphere.

To control that may be just too difficult.

(Sniffs) God that smells good!

'Churchill has been forced to devise a unique and radical method of dealing with "bad" bears that pose a threat.

On the outskirts of town is the world's first, and only, polar bear jail!'

It's coming up here.

Gosh, it's a pretty bleak building.

There are 28 cells so that's the maximum capacity.

Look at it.

And eerily quiet.

'Only members of the town's "Polar Bear Alert Program" are allowed inside to avoid bears becoming conditioned to people.

Polar Bear Alert Program say that the purpose of this building is two fold.

It's to protect the public.

To get bears that are potentially nuisance, problem bears, away from the town.

But also to protect the bears' welfare.

Bears caught in town are locked up here for at least 30 days in an attempt to keep them from returning to any food source they may have found in town.

They're not fed.

Bears are used to going without food at this time of year.

When they did try feeding them one year, the following summer, those bears returned and tried to break back into jail!

I've arranged to see the release of an inmate.

It will be airlifted by helicopter and then released well away from town.'

This is the chopper that's gonna do the lift and we're gonna follow it in ours.

Look at the number of tourists who come and have a look at this.

This is all part of the tourism deal here with polar bears.

People wanna get close to them.

Here he comes, here he is.

He's been marked as well with the green mark so they can identify him.

Not a massive bear.

The bear has been sedated, tranquilized, so it's essentially anesthetized.

Eyes protected because they can stay open and get damaged.

It's now being put in a net.

It's pretty undignified for the king of the ice, isn't it?

There he goes.

We'll need to get in our helicopter to follow him.

Wow!

- Watch the tail rotor.

- Yeah.

(Radio chatter) Yeah, one two, one two.

Can you hear me?

One two, one two.

Over.

Thank you.

This is a truly extraordinary sight, isn't it?

It's a young one.

A young male.

Being carried in a net under a helicopter and all because he strayed into town and got himself into trouble.

And he's now being shipped further up north to a place that he would have walked to anyway.

'This particular bear has been through this ordeal three out of the last five years.

He's spent the last month in captivity awaiting release.

It's amazing, isn't it, all this effort to move this polar bear just 35 miles north of Churchill.

Incredible.

'The flight path is directly up the coast where other bears are making the slow migration north.'

Wow, there's one down there now.

Quite a big one too.

I mean, you really have to keep your eyes open because even though that is a massive animal, that can weigh more than half a ton, it looks like a speck in this huge wilderness.

What a contrast to that poor young male strung up under a helicopter.

What a contrast.

So we're at the drop zone now, but what the helicopters are doing is flying around in a circle to look for other polar bears.

There's some caribou down there.

They wouldn't be a problem but other polar bears and wolves would be a problem.

Particularly while the bear's recovering.

They need to fly around and make sure they've got an area which is clear of other predators.

And we've spotted a wolf so we're having to move.

So here comes the polar bear now.

It's taken about 15, 20 minutes to get here.

Wow.

Unceremoniously... dumped on the ground.

Still asleep, though.

Still knows nothing about what's going on.

'This year 15 bears have already been flown out by helicopter.

In particularly busy years the total count for the season can be more than 30.

It's an expensive operation that needs to be carried out quickly while the polar bear is out cold and not becoming conditioned to humans.'

Wow!

They don't give a reversing agent.

They let it wake up, but they wake up pretty quickly.

Sometimes even when they're trying to get them out the net.

You can see him start to move his head.

It's time for us to get out of here.

(PILOT) Okay.

He's beginning to wake up now.

He's just kind of twitched his head a little bit.

I just hope this bear has learned something from this experience and that's that next year when he walks past Churchill he takes a look... and he keeps walking.

Because if he doesn't and he ends up back in town, this is what's gonna happen to him again.

'The problem bear has been released just a few days' walk from Arviat.

Less than a mile from town there's a place the bear is very likely to show up first the dump.

Locals say the smell here plays a part in drawing bears into town.

Polar bears have an incredible sense of smell.

They can detect a seal's breathing hole up to a kilometer away even when it's buried under a meter of snow.

(Sniffing) I want to see just how much of a problem Arviat's dump really is.

I've borrowed a hide to keep me safe.'

On the sledge in front of me is my special tower.

This is where we're gonna be camping out in the dump.

It's bear-proof, I am told by the locals.

Fingers crossed!

'Hopefully this hide will keep me protected and warm during an overnight stake-out.'

I tell you what, it's very, very easy to forget the fact you're in bear country when you're so focused on doing a job like getting this thing set up.

Your mind is on that and not on the fact that anywhere around this dump could be bears hanging around.

And they are stealth killers.

We have to keep... our eyes open.

'The locals don't know exactly how many bears come here each night to feed.

So I'm using a night vision camera to find out.'

We've got our image intensifying camera.

It's incredibly sensitive.

We can't have any lights on at all.

Even a flashlight pointing into that lens would trash the sensor.

'It doesn't take long for the first bears to arrive.'

A couple of cubs here foraging about just in front of where all the garbage is, but there are three other bears.

We think two females but also a massive, massive male.

He is huge.

'At the peak of activity there are nine polar bears on the dump.

'(Low whining)' Can you hear that?

You're looking at it as if you're watching it on TV, and actually this is going on literally 20 feet on the other side of these walls.

And I tell you what, if they did attack this shelter...

..I'm pretty confident... ..they would just force their way in.

Which is a little bit worrying.

(Thudding) This is really tragic though, isn't it?

I mean, everybody's image of polar bears is out on the ice when they're feeding.

They're eating seals that they've caught and here are some of the most magnificent animals on earth.

The largest land predators on earth scavenging off a garbage dump.

It's desperately, desperately sad.

'I was told to expect a bear or two but not this many.

I want to find out from Joe and Jonathan if these animals are among the ones that have caused problems in town.'

So do you know this bear, Jonathan?

Yeah, this one... the mother and two cubs we've been having issues with in the community for almost two weeks.

We've seen it on the shoreline just waiting for the night, to come back.

And then it'll come back in and start causing more trouble.

- So these will be some of her first cubs, will they?

- Yes.

(MARK) Yeah.

Yeah.

What worries me about a bear like her is she's now bringing her cubs to the tip, and they're now learning this is a place to come back to.

And they will be bears you get to see again and again.

I mean, how old do you think these guys are?

About a year.

So a year old, and they've already learned that a good place to hang out is the tip in Arviat, because - look at them - they're getting food.

'At this time of year natural food sources are almost non-existent and bears could go for months without eating.

So for animals hard-wired to sniff out any signs of a meal a strong-smelling dump is a huge draw, even if it's on fire.'

That's amazing.

They're right by the fire.

They've been burning the rubbish.

What a surreal sight, seeing an adult polar bear.

And I can see cubs there as well, standing right next to a pile of burning rubbish.

That is completely weird.

'The consequences for bears eating at the dump was revealed during Arviat's annual polar bear hunt a few days before I arrived in town.

This year a lottery draw awarded ten locals the right to kill a bear each.

It took 36 just hours for the quota to be reached and all the animals were shot close to town.

A shocking discovery was made on examining the stomach of a young male.'

(MAN) All garbage!

Plastic bags, ketchup packets and disposable cups had all been eaten by the hungry bear.

This female bear and cubs are so desperate to find food that they risk scavenging during the day too.

Studies have shown there's no difference in survival rates between bears who pack on extra calories at dumps and those that sit out the summer gradually losing weight.

The town is trying to raise the funds to make this dump bear-proof.

But in the meantime I'm determined to help find a solution to this terrible situation.

I've decided to try a new approach to deterring bears using sound.'

I'm heading off to the edge of the village to carry out a little experiment.

'Targeting a bear's hearing could offer a more humane way to deter them from a distance - replacing rubber bullets.'

Let's put it down here.

'To see how bears respond to sounds I'm testing a device designed to scare animals away.'

Put yours in.

Yeah.

'It detects movement and automatically sounds an alarm.'

So this is the little device.

It's got a motion detector and then an alarm inside it.

So anything that approaches here should end up triggering it.

Talking to the locals they've said that ten or 15 years ago people used to come out regularly camping, but now people wouldn't even consider doing it because it's just too dangerous.

To film what happens...

I'm gonna to set up these camera traps, two of them.

I'm gonna put another tent much further on down here with no deterrent on it at all just to see what a polar bear will do when it comes across a tent like that and there's nothing to frighten it off.

'I was keen to check the results the next morning.'

I haven't seen any of this footage yet.

I've literally just uploaded the files.

'The first video clips are from the control tent with no deterrent.'

Ah...a polar bear.

Investigating, have a sniff around... Oh, another one!

Wow!

That is a big polar bear!

Three polar bears!

Bears are so inquisitive, they're so curious.

So this was taken a couple of hours later.

That's a different bear, a big male now.

Huh?

(Growls) You cannot imagine how terrifying...that would be... ..to have an animal that size, a predator... ..stomping on your tent.

Wow, that's pretty dramatic.

And you can just see from those images, I mean, the scale of the polar bear!

The size of it compared to a two-man tent!

'Camping in polar bear territory is a real danger.

Last year an American man was attacked in Canada.

He was dragged from his tent at night and mauled.

I'm eager to see if the alarm deterrent was set off and whether it worked.'

This is the key one for me, is the test with the alarm.

And here's the bear, right up against the tent.

- '(Alarm bleeping)' - Ha!

As soon as that alarm went off that bear...disappeared.

And then it never got activated again.

That's the only file we got off that camera.

So that bear appeared, the alarm sounded and it disappeared and it didn't come back again, which is really, really cool.

I think this will be fine here.

'The tent test showed that sound could be a viable means of scaring bears away.

But the alarm I tried only works close up.

So I'm now gonna try a device that transmits sound over a much longer distance.'

Okay.

There we go.

'It's a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD for short.

A military-grade piece of technology.

Normal speakers produce waves of sound, which spread out widely.

LRAD produces a sound, which is much more directional.

The narrow beam is so loud it can travel up to two kilometers.'

Okay, so, we're gonna fire it up.

The thing comes with a number of sounds in it already, for the other uses it has.

What on earth is that?

'Unidentified small boat, you are approaching a United States war ship operating in international waters.

You are sailing into danger and may be subject to defensive measures.'

So I think you're getting the idea.

A lot of its work is in hostage negotiation, crowd control, deterring pirates, that kind of stuff, where you need to be able to have a very clear message, heard over a long distance, where they can be very directional about it.

So it could work here if we can point it in the direction of polar bears, but communicate with them in a way that they understand, maybe we can deter them.

'The focused beam of the LRAD means it could be used to deter polar bears without disturbing people nearby.'

I'm aiming to get a sound level of around 80 decibels at 200 meters.

Now, you think, a cracker shell is about 120 decibels, and a normal human conversation maybe 65 or 70.

So, I don't want to use any level of sound that's gonna damage the bears' hearing or distress them in that way.

It just needs to be enough to convince them they need to move away.

(Siren-like whooping) Enough, stop.

'The question is, what sound will scare off a polar bear?

I want to recreate a study carried out 30 years ago that successfully used recordings of an aggressive bear.

My LRAD speaker will work over a much longer distance than the one used in the trial, so it could be a much more powerful tool.'

I've had sent to me a sound recording of a captive bear that was being aggressive to another bear and that's my starting point, but what I want to be able to do is to create the biggest, boldest, bad-ass bear that any polar bear coming anywhere near Arviat has ever heard.

And to do that I'm gonna take this sound and then make the roar longer and deeper.

So if I just fiddle with the time shift on it.

'I'm making it 30% longer and about half an octave deeper.

Hopefully other polar bears should want to avoid an area where they think there's a huge aggressive male hanging out.'

'(Prolonged roar)' Sounds pretty convincing to me!

'It's not long before I have a chance to try out my long-range speaker.

Word comes through that bears are back at the dump feeding on garbage.'

Joe's gone inside to try and move them away because it's burning rubbish in there.

They've got to be moved on.

(Cracker shell whines and whistles) (Pop!)

Yeah, you can just see them now... ..just slowly walking there around the edge of the lagoon.

'The bears are still too near the dump so I'm gonna try and keep them on the move using my speaker.'

So where would you recommend setting this up?

There's a... out here, not too far from here, between here and the water, the ocean, there's a little, like a knoll or a little high place.

- Yeah.

- I think that would be perfect right there.

'I've got the sound of a roaring super bear loaded up and ready to go.

I hope it will provide a more humane alternative to cracker shells and rubber bullets.

But these long-range, highly directional speakers have never been used in this way.

We don't know if the sound will be convincing at this distance.

This is a female: bears here don't mate until late spring, so she should be frightened, rather than attracted by a male bear's roar at this time of year.'

And this is the female and the cub that I first saw when I first arrived, in the electric fence, hassling those dogs and eating their food.

This bear is a troublemaker.

- Power on.

- (Click) Okay, set the volume up.

So, here we go.

'(Roaring)' '(Roaring continues)' '(Roaring continues)' (MARK) Look at that.

- Yeah.

(MARK) That's incredible.

An instant, instant reaction.

Okay, it's really important, Jonathan, that we switch it off as soon as she moves away.

There we go, stop it.

Because she needs to learn that if she moves away, the growling, the thing that's frightening her will stop.

And that's a reward for her.

Do you remember what you said to me when we first met?

Yes, I did.

I said I'd stick to my snowmobile and shotgun.

Yeah, I remember that.

How surprised were you?

I had my doubts there but they got up right away, and they didn't like the sound and they ran off.

Pretty, pretty impressive.

I know that's only one test but it's massively encouraging for me.

And I hope for these guys as well, because what it's shown is that high-tech could have a place here in Arviat, to be able to help them with their polar bear problem.

'It's an encouraging result and the speaker manufacturers are in contact with local wildlife agencies about doing trials on smaller speakers that can be fitted to snowmobiles.

But scaring bears away is a last resort.

Joe and I want to try a low-tech plan and the necessary permits have finally come through.

It's a controversial approach to reward bears that stay away from town in the weeks before the ice reforms.

The idea is to set up feeding stations stocked with seal meat at two locations, two miles out of town.

We hopes that approaching bears are diverted before they pose a threat to people in Arviat.'

So these old, just oil drums.

Yeah, they were.

They're just drums that are used for diesel.

- Okay.

- 55-gallon drums.

And I just took two of them, and took the lid off, put the seal carcass in.

So you made them all yourself?

Yes, I did, yeah.

And I just welded bars to prevent the bears from taking the meat away.

That's where the bears come from, in that direction, and they're traveling this way.

What are you gonna do with the whole one?

This whole one here, I'm gonna cut it up into small pieces.

The reason I'm doing that is if it's whole a bear will come here, a bigger one, and just take it away with him.

Yeah, drag it off.

You'd better get chopping.

Joe's seal barrels here are the kind of, if you like, the polar bear equivalent of the food balls that you can buy for dogs at home, where you put the food inside and the dog can play with them.

Food drops out of them and it keeps the dog occupied.

And if they learn where the food stations are, on their route, as they walk past Arviat, it will keep them from going, "Hang on."

(Sniffs) "What's that over there?"

..and heading off into town.

'I can see why people worry about feeding wild animals, but the alternative is polar bears threatening the lives of people in town and potentially being shot dead in the process.

We set up cameras to see if our low-tech solution works.

We couldn't wait to see the results the following morning.'

Let's just have a look on the laptop.

Right.

Okay.

So this was from one of them, because we set up two traps.

- Mm-hm.

- Okay.

Here we go.

So, Arctic fox, because they were bound to be attracted, because they're everywhere.

I'm sweating a bit wondering what's gonna happen next, because it must have caught bears on here.

Oh, my goodness!

(Joe chuckles) Look at the size of that bear.

That is a big bear.

(JOE) He's making the drum look small.

(MARK) Huge bear.

Look at the power of those fore legs, the front legs.

Look at him!

He's playing with it like a toy.

Do you think it's a male or a female, that one?

- A male.

- Yeah?

He's more intrigued by the barrel than he is by the just chopped up seal on the snow.

Yeah, definitely.

You can see that, yeah.

Oh, my word, another one.

Even bigger.

(Joe chuckles) Wow!

- Pleased?

- Very.

So what was the bear activity like in the town last night?

Last night there was no bear activity in or around town.

- None?

- Nothing!

How unusual is that?

Very unusual for this time of the year.

This is all looking very good for you, isn't it?

Very, very, for the project, yeah.

It's one night, but, you know, that's amazing!

Yeah.

Very.

'Over the course of the night the camera traps captured a total of nine different bears investigating the diversionary feeding site.

It's a great result and by using different containers in the future Joe could ensure bears don't learn to associate oil drums with food.'

The human/polar bear conflict problem here in Canada's frozen north is clearly a very complicated issue and a massive challenge to solve.

But what's really impressed me here is how proactive Arviat's been about trying to find an intelligent, long-term solution.

'My hope is that the sound deterrent, which scares bears away could be used in combination with a reward-based solution like diversionary feeding.

For me, a two-pronged approach is the best hope for a long-term answer to Arviat's polar bear problem.'

Thank you very much.

Listen, keep in touch.

You look after yourself, alright?

- Have a safe flight.

- Yeah.

Take care, dude.

Bye.

'A couple of weeks after I'd gone the ice formed on Arviat's coast and the bears left to hunt seals.

Until then, Joe's diversionary feeding successfully kept the bears occupied and away from town.'

'(Roaring)' 'There are many challenges ahead but I'm convinced there's a way to keep people safe as well as protecting these amazing animals.'

Next time on Operation Maneater, I'm in Namibia, Africa, to visit the reputed croc-attack capital of the world.

That...   ... is a lot of crocodile.

I'm joining crocodile behavior experts attempting a radical new experiment.

Whoa!

To try to keep both people... ...and crocodiles... ...safe.

'Operation Man