Born and raised in Alberta, Dr. Brooke Biddlecombe’s research has taken her across the Canadian Arctic, studying beluga, narwhal, bowhead whales, walrus, killer whales, and polar bears.
We spoke with Brooke about her current research with Polar Bears International, which focuses on the coexistence of tourism activity and polar bears near Churchill, Manitoba.
Why study polar bear tourism?
I want to understand how tourism activity affects behaviour and space use in Western Hudson Bay polar bears, and build on those associations to understand whether tourism activity can impact how polar bears use their habitat.
Why is this so important to study right now?
Tourism regulations in Churchill are changing to require operators to keep a strict 100-metre distance from the bears. This has been a point of contention in the community, with concerns about real-world applicability and the lack of scientific data available to inform these regulatory changes. The most recent research on the impacts of tourism on polar bears is more than two decades old, and even so, new guidelines were not strongly informed by historical or current research. Both tourism groups and the Government of Manitoba are calling for increased information from which to guide regulatory decisions, and this project aims to fill in some of those gaps.
What’s new about this project?
As tourism has grown and changed, so has the need for updated information. Our method of data collection is also new. I created an app that allows any user (researcher, guide, or tourist) to record their tours and details about polar bear sightings, to involve as many people (and as many bears!) as possible in the data collection.
The app allows users to record GPS tracks of tours and record polar bear sightings. Users can log the location of their polar bear sighting, sex and age class of the bear (if possible), distance of the bear from the tourism vehicle, number of surrounding vehicles, bear behaviour, changes in behaviour, and users can upload a photo of the sighting. All collected data are sent to an online database, which is not publicly accessible, a required detail for many tourism operators to reduce the risk of people “swarming” logged bears if the data were public.
What have you learned so far?
So far, we have been able to map tourism density in Churchill for the first time. We are also starting to understand patterns in polar bear responses to tourism. For example, we found that polar bears are less likely to respond to tourism vehicles as each day progresses.
Has anything particularly surprised you about your findings?
We are still too early in data collection to make definitive claims, but I expect many assumptions about how tourism and polar bears co-exist will be challenged. Which we hope will provide information for more science-based tourism regulatory decisions in the future.
What happens next?
Moving forward we plan to continue data collection with our tourism operator collaborators in Churchill. We have also begun expanding the project to other regions in Canada and internationally across the Arctic where polar bear tourism occurs.
How can the public support this work?
The field work component of this project directly relies on support from PBI, so anyone supporting PBI is automatically supporting this research! That said, if supporters are planning to view polar bears themselves, they should look to support science forward tourism companies, as these are the companies that have played a vital role in making this work happen.
I am extremely grateful for the earnest collaboration I have received from many tourism operators and guides in Churchill and elsewhere. It is very heartening to see how many tourism operators are committed to polar bear welfare.