Welcome to the episode thirteen point five of Get Out Alive, a podcast where
we talk about animal attacks, why they happen, and how you cannot get
attacked yourself. I'm your host, Ashley, I'm your host Nick, and
this is the remix. No, it's just the interview episode of our Polar
Bear Stories. Yeah. Yeah, So today we're talking to Danielle Rivett and
she is studying polar bears in the Arctic Circle, so she knows a whole
lot more than we do. She knows infinitely more than we do. Slash
did because we know basically nothing. I learned so much from her. Oh,
I don't want to take up too much time. But basically, if
you join us on patreon dot com slash Ghetto Alive at the five or fifteen
dollars level, then you're getting this right after the episode releases, which is
on November ten, and if not, you're getting it a week after.
And that's fine too. Yeah, but maybe you should listen to the other
one first. Probably, I don't know. It doesn't meant I'm not going
to tell you how to live your life. I don't want to take up
too much time. I think we should just get right into it because it's
very long and all of it is very good. Let's do it. My
name is Danielle Rivett. I am a PhD candidate at the University of Saskatchewan
and I currently work with Doug Clark and I am working on finishing up my
PhD project looking at anthropogenic drivers and environmental drivers of polar bear movement in Wapis
National Park in Manitoba. And we're trying to figure out what types of bears
are moving through certain areas there in the park, at what times, and
what is making them move through those areas. And we're doing all of that
based on remote camera trap data that we get from cameras that have been placed
out in the park. With the help of Parks Canada and the people at
the Churchill Northern Study Center, which is really awesome, we get all of
this data, we can put it together and then hopefully use that information to
provide to conservation officers and wildlife managers to kind of help them understand better what's
going on in that ecosystem and to hopefully help mitigate a lot of polar bear
human conflict that's going on in some of those areas. Gotcha, and I
just have to ask because I know that your masters was on Grizzly Bears.
Correct? Correct? How did you get so lucky to work with Bears in
both your masters and your PhD? So it's actually kind of a funny story.
I really just fell into it. For my masters. I did my
undergraduate program at sunni Oswego in Central New York, right on Lake Ontario,
and I majored in zoology. But I was actually working with River Otters for
my honors thesis while I was there. That's awesome, just observation stuff,
you know, nothing, And I started kind of poking around and looking for
master's programs, hopefully something that was funded. And I just found a listing
for Washington State University on the Texas A and M Biology job boards saying that
they were just kind of accepting grad students overall. So I went to their
website and I poked around in the department and I found a link to the
Bear Center and I emailed Charlie Robbins, who's the director there at the time.
I'm not sure if he still is, he might be currently, but
I emailed him and I was like, Hey, you know what's going on
over there? And you guys have funded programs. I'm really interested in bears
and hibernation and that kind of stuff, and he emailed me back and he's
like, let's have an interview. So I kind of went from there and
I had to go there in person for an interview, and within a week
after my interview, I had a letter from WSU saying that I was accepted.
So it just kind of happened on accident, honestly. And then when
I started looking for my PhD program, I actually started off working with Columbian
ground squirrels because they also hibernate very differently from bears as it turns out.
But I was kind of using my hibernation experience with the grizzlies to kind of
fuel the beginning of that project, and it didn't super work out for me,
and I was kind of looking for something else here at the same university.
At the university as a skatchman, and I just happened to email Doug
because he was looking for a master student and I said, hey, do
you have room for a PhD student in your lab also? And he was
like, come on over. So I've been working with bears for almost ten
years now, which is awesome. That is awesome. Wow, because I
know Nick, I mean, if you got that opportunity. Yeah, I'm
a big bear guy. Yeah, bears are pretty cool. I don't know
if you've listened to the Word or any episodes, but yeah, we're we're
big into bears. It's a epsis for me. Yeah, Fat Bear Week
was a big deal to us. Yes, so that Bear Week is very
exciting for everyone. So how did you feel about the outcome the winner?
You know, I think it was kind of expected, but I feel like
Walker was maybe fatter. I don't know. Oh, okay, I don't
know. I tend to vote not necessarily based on which bear is absolutely the
fattest. I kind of do more like, oh I really liked this bear,
or I try and see, like maybe he's not the fattest bear,
but this one is actually put on the most weight or the most chunk since
like the original photo was taken. So yeah, it's hard, That is
how I felt. It's very hard to vote sometimes. Yeah, absolutely,
Yeah, Nick was really gunn for who is the seven forty seven? Yeah?
Yeah he won last year though I think didn't he he did? Yeah?
Past two years, past two years? Excuse me, just so we
all have our factory. Yeah, all right, go ahead, Nick,
So you're gonna try and calm down from that bear controversy. Do you have
any idea how common conflicts are between people and polar bears. I don't think
we have a lot of people really living up in the Arctic Circle. So
most of the people that are up in that area are indigenous peoples and people
in northern communities who have been experiencing this conflict for a very long time.
Right, So a lot more of the increased conflict that's happening now, I
think is more people who are kind of transient through that area, people who
are tourists, people who are there for certain kinds of industry work, because
that is really increasing a lot in some of those areas. But polar conflicts,
I'm sure I have been going on for a long time. But polar
bear attacks are actually quite quite rare. There was a study put out by
James Wilder at All I believe in twenty seventeen where they did an analysis looking
at the frequency of polar bear attacks trying to see, you know, just
understand what's going on there. Witch bears are in these attacks, How we
can mitigate that in the future because we think that stuff like that might be
increasing. But they looked at attacks documented attacks from eighteen seventy to twenty fourteen,
so one hundred and forty five years, and they only had seventy three.
So seventy three attacks over one hundred and forty five years. Pretty small
number, right, Like, they don't happen very often. Now, obviously
that can't include everything because not everything is documented. Things tend to be documented
more when they're you know, their grievous injuries or fatalities or things like that.
But you know, just basic conflict where there are bears coming into towns
and stuff like that, that's not included in that. So that would only
be attacks, but it's pretty rare. But we would think with current conditions
that things like that might be increasing. So would you say that, like,
maybe conflicts are more because polar bears come into towns looking for food,
not even necessarily like polar bears trying to attack people. It's just like kind
of budding into them when they're searching for just scraps. Essentially, most attacks,
most conflict that we see is actually bears that are nutritionally stressed or younger
bears like immature bears, right, because they might not necessarily know what's going
on all the time. They haven't figured out how to be you know,
that big apex predator. They don't have their hunting skills honed in because they're
still young and they're still learning how to do things. But in most cases
that we see when polar bears are coming into conflict with people, they are
either nutritionally stressed, they're very hungry, they've been on land perhaps and haven't
had a whole lot of access to seals and you know, that's the food
that they would commonly eat, or they're just younger bears that don't have a
clue yet, they don't know what they're doing. So those would be the
types of bears most likely involved in these incidents. There are, you know,
occasionally female bears that have cubs that might be involved in an incident because
they're trying to defend their cub, But in most cases it's bears that are
hungry, so they're coming into these areas because there's attractants, things that smell
good that might be food, or they're bears that haven't figured out this is
what I hunt somewhere else away from people just yet. Awesome. What are
some things that people that do live those areas do to protect selves from bolar
bears? Yeah, so there are quite a few things that you can kind
of keep in mind, I guess when you're living in polar bear country or
recreating in polar bear country, because polar bears are a whole different ballgame than
black and brown bears, you know, the bears that we're used to.
They actually have a whole different like set of behavioral things that they do.
Like, polar bears will almost never bluff charge somebody. Yeah, so if
a polar bear is, you know, following you or kind of acting like
it's stalking or hunting you, it's going to be following you. It's going
to be circling you. It's going to directly approach you. It's not going
to act afraid. If it gets scared off, it might back if it's
actually demonstrating those kind of predatory behaviors. And like I said, those types
of bears tend to be nutritionally stressed, so they might be wounded, they
might be old, they might be skinny, things like that, but polar
bear is almost never bluff charge if they're coming at you. They're coming at
you with the intent to do something. They're not going to turn away,
usually at the last second. So you kind of have to be very,
very familiar with bear behavior because, like I said, polar bear is very
different from black and brown bears. It's going to do different things. But
if you are just in that general area, then you kind of would do
the same things that you would do in black or brown bear country. Right,
don't leave your food out, don't leave out anything that could act as
an attractant. Travel in groups, you know, be with other people.
A lot of these polar bear attacks or conflicts that occur, it's usually with
two or less people in the groups. Like if you have a bigger group,
you're more likely to be safe. That's obviously not always the case sometimes
things happen, but the bigger your group, the better off you are typically.
I know, like when I was in Churchhill, we had various specific
rules that we had to follow every time we left the study center, right,
Like you look outside before you go out the door, just to make
sure that there aren't any bears outside. You have somebody in your group that
is basically acting as a bear monitor, so they're always kind of on alert,
looking around, checking out the area. A lot of times, like
Parks Canada will actually provide somebody that is like a certified bear monitor for you.
They do carry a firearm because that can be necessary sometimes, and they
are trained in recognizing polar bear behavior, and they're trained in how to use
their firearm appropriately and all of those kinds of things. So, like having
a bear monitor is very important. Usually depends on the size of your group.
You might have more than one, right, you might have somebody in
the front and somebody in the back and somebody in the middle paying attention,
you know, just to make sure that everybody in the group is protected.
We never walked through areas where there was limited visibility if we could avoid it.
So we tried to stay away from really thick stands of willow because polar
bears love to go into the willow and lay down and be cool and in
the shade. Right, So you would never go through like a really thick
stand of willow without knowing that there could potentially be a polar bear in there.
And Churchill is like the polar bear sanctuary, right, I was reading
up a little bit. Yeah, it's considered the polar bear capital of the
world. And that's because it's kind of like right on this prime piece of
land. It's one of the last places where the ice disappears in that area
in the beginning of the summer, so it's where the bears come on shore
when the ice goes away, and then they kind of slowly meander their way
up the coast to Cape Churchill because that's the first place where the ice comes
back in in the fall. So they just kind of hang out in that
area, and a lot of the females, if they're pregnant, they'll go
a little bit further inland to like a dinning area. They don't actually hibernate,
but the females that are pregnant will go into this dinning area and they'll
give birth to their cubs in these dens. And that's all like kind of
right there in that general area, right there in wapisk and right around Churchill.
That whole area is big for polar bears. But I mean there are
polar bears all over the place. There's polar bears in Russia, there's polar
bears in Alaska and Norway, and you know, like Small Bard is one
of the big areas in Norway for polar bears. Greenland has polar bears,
and in some of those places, the ice doesn't necessarily go away, right.
They have ice some of these areas all year round, and so the
situation is very different there where you might only experience polar bears in Churchill during
bear season, which would be in the fall when everybody's waiting for the ice
to come back. So like September October is peak bear season, even sometimes
to November depending on how late the ice is. But in places like Greenland
and Norway, you could have bear encounters all the time, like it's unpredictable,
so you just kind of have to be aware of the situation and make
sure that you're being as safe as you can because you could encounter a bear
at anytime. Gotcha. And we have a question from a patron member,
Jeremy Montoya, who heard when he was younger that polar bears will basically relentlessly
track humans if other food is scarce. Those curious if that was true and
our if humans are easier prey than like seals and whatnot. So you kind
of let onto that a little bit where you said, if they're coming after
you they're basically coming after you, So like, if that happens, what
can you do to stop them in that case? Yeah, I think that
kind of might be a common misconception that they're you know, if you see
a polar bear, it's absolutely out there to get you, right, Like,
that's not the case, because if it if it were the case,
then polar bear attacks would be way more frequent and more common than they are.
Right. There are quite a few people living up in these areas where
there are polar bears and attacks are still generally pretty rare. So I don't
think that that's the case at all, And I think that was kind of
the point with some of these more recent studies where they're looking at the trend
of polar bear attacks is to show that, you know, they're not just
this man eating animal that's out to get people. That being said, if
a polar bear is nutritionally stressed and there's a person that's in their environment that
they feel might be an easy target, you know, maybe they're having problems
getting seals or it's not seal season right, and they're thin because they're on
land. There is nothing to suggest that a polar bear wouldn't maybe try.
You know, they're going to expend a certain amount of energy, but after
a point it's not worth it. Right. There have actually been a few
circumstances where people noted that when a bear, a polar bear, was approaching
them as if to attack them, they kind of realized at the last minute
that they weren't typical prey and they actually aborted the attack. Kind of like
a shark, right, a shark swimming underneath you, if you're on a
surfboard, might think you're a seal or sea lion or whatever that it would
eat. It goes up, it takes a bite, and they're like,
oh crap, this isn't what I thought it was, and then they swim
away. So there have been instances where that's happened with polar bears. I
don't think it's super common, but I mean, polar bears are large and
they're powerful, and if it thought it was going to attack you because you
looked like an easy prey source, it's probably not wrong. Like, I
don't think there's much that people can usually do against polar bears unless you have
a form of deterrent. So that kind of gets around to your The other
part of your question, right, what do you do if that actually happens
to you? And you know there are ways that you can deal with that.
Most people who travel in polar bear country, as I mentioned, somebody
has a firearm typically, so you should be well versed in knowing exactly how
your particular firearmworks how to use it. But there are other ways to deter
polar bears. So a lot of people that are like in Greenland or Norway,
like when they go out into these areas and they're they're camping, or
they're doing research or whatever the case may be, they might be out hunting
other animals. You can set up trip wires around your camp, and when
that tripwire is hit by a bear, it actually discharges like a banger,
so it makes a loud sound that might scare the bears away. That's awesome,
yeah, And so not only might it scare the bear away, but
it also then alerts you to the fact that there's an animal that's hitting your
trip wire, right, because a lot of these times bears will come into
these areas when everybody is asleep, because they don't want to walk into a
camp with a bunch of people up and walking around, right, Like that's
not something that they're going to do probably, so they'll come into these camps
when people are asleep. So having that tripwire is really useful in terms of
maybe frightening the bear way and alerting people in camp that there could be a
possible issue. There are like these little pin gun type things, so like
it's just like a thin strip, or you can have one that actually goes
into a pistol that does the same thing. It just fires off like a
false charge like a banger, makes a loud noise. You can use that
as a deterrent bear spray. Obviously, is it good idea. It hasn't
been extensively tested with polar bears, but it is very effective with black and
brown bears, and in some more recent studies that they've done trying to use
it on polar bears to see how effective it is, it does pretty well.
So you have to be aware obviously that you know, the temperatures are
usually colder in places where there are polar bears, so that could kind of
affect how well the spray works, how it comes out of the can.
Things like that. You should always be aware of where the wind is so
which way it's going to blow when it comes out of the can. That
is also helpful information. Try not to bear spray yourself. I have done
that. It's not pleasant, but you know, things like that are usually
good deterrence, So bear spray if you have bear bangers, like the trip
wire bangers or the pin pistol bangers, things like that. But a lot
of those kind of commercially available deterrence, like the bangers and the bear spray,
they're not super widely available in a lot of places, so a ton
of times you actually have to get them somewhere else and take them with you.
Bear spray, I believe is actually still illegal in Norway and Greenland.
Really yeah, I mean it used to be. I'm not sure if it
still is. I believe it still is because previously there just wasn't enough information
that said that it was actually effective against polar bears, so people would just
carry a firearm with them instead and use other deterrence. There have been cases
where people who are attacked have been able to kind of fight off the bear
by you know, hitting it in sensitive areas and it's like on its nose,
going for its eyeballs, things like that, which would be horrifying.
You know, you never want it to get to that point. Yeah,
but you know people have beaten bears back from its attacking somebody with large sticks.
There was the case where the young woman was attacked in Churchill Aaron Green
and a local ran out of his residence because he heard her screaming in the
street and he started attacking the bear with a shovel to get the bear off
of her. So, you know, things like that will work hopefully if
you're ever in that situation, but the goal would be to avoid, you
know, making that kind of physical contact. Hopefully your deterrence are good enough
to keep bears away so that you don't ever get into that kind of a
situation. So how do the people that live around here actually feel about the
bears? Is it something that they need to be aware of every single day
of their lives. Are they actually worried about being attacked on a daily basis?
And we've heard that there were revenge killings after a bear attacks of person.
Is that true? And is it actually legal in the airs that the
bears live. Let me kind of chime and break that down. I think
it really depends on where people live and how frequently they're interacting with bears,
and that's what determines how they feel about them. A lot of these people
that are Inuit or Indigenous or that live in these northern communities, like the
people in Churchill, they have very very great respect for the bears. They
love the bears good. A lot of the indigenous people actually use the polar
bears for subsistence hunting so they feed their families. They have you know,
like limited limited tags and stuff that they can you know, fill so that
they can help feed their communities and their families. But they have very very
great respect for the bears. It's kind of like some of these First Nations
communities that you hear about in British Columbia that you know, don't want grizzly
hunts or things like that. They're very important to their culture. They need
the bears around, like that's just part of their culture. A lot of
people in Churchill feel the same way about polar bears because either they were raised
that way and it's part of their culture, or like polar bears are a
huge part of Churchill's economy. Right. It's just a very small town.
There's no roads that go there. You either take the train, or you
fly and people come to Churchill to see the polar Bears. That's what they
do. So you want to be able to maintain those populations because that's where
your money comes from, or it's part of your culture. So a lot
of people really like the bears. They don't typically have, you know,
like a hateful or spiteful relationship with them. That being said, when you
live in an area like that, you absolutely need to be aware all the
time of wind bears could possibly be around you, right, because if you're
not, it could be a dangerous situation. So I think a lot of
those people are just kind of used to it. It's part of their daily
life, so they incorporate that into the things that they need to do.
But I also think some people probably get a little complacent, right, Like
who wouldn't When it's something that you deal with every day, you might start
to kind of think that it isn't a big deal or not something that you
need to do. Or it's like, you know, when you cross the
street, how often does everybody look both ways twice before they cross the street
anymore? So it's that kind of a thing, like I think some people
will absolutely get complacent and forget, or you know, they might leave something
out that could be an attractant, or you know, they don't look out
their door before they walk outside, and maybe there might be a bear there,
Like who knows. You never know in terms of like retaliatory killing after
an attack. Obviously, attacks are very controversial. They're emotional things. People
get kind of charged up about it when it happens, especially if there's a
fatality that might be involved. I think a lot of people kind of accept
that that's something that might happen when you live in a certain area, but
that doesn't mean that they don't necessarily think that changes should happen. Like one
of the things that came from people being attacked in the Churchill areas the Polar
Bear Alert system, which is great. Like there's a bear in town,
Polar Bear Alert goes out with their trucks, they haze it away from town.
They make sure that the people in their community are safe. If they
have to, they'll put the bear in the what they call the Polar bear
jail. I don't know if you guys have heard about that. I have
not. They have a facility right there in Churchill where if they have bears
that are kind of being problem bears and keep coming back into town. They'll
actually put them into this facility for the duration of the onshore season, and
then once the ice comes back in, they'll let them go. They just
they drop them off right on the ice and they can go out and do
their thing. That's incredible. They you know, they have people patrolling and
you know, when these events happen, it's unfortunate obviously, but like people
in the community tend to kind of come together and say, Okay, what
can we do to fix this? What can we do better to avoid this
situation in the future, So you know, you might change the way that
your garbage is collected, because leaving garbage out for collection could be an attractant,
right. They increased patrols for polar bear alert after an attack, just
to make sure that everybody, you know, is safe. They encourage people
to you know, walk in groups. They put better lighting on the streets
so that you could see things at night. You know, there's there's all
these things that can come from that kind of conflict that are good. Occasionally
people are upset and sometimes animals that are not involved will be killed. But
that happens. I think even like in our like in the US national parks,
right, if you have a brown bear that has attacked somebody, sometimes
they get the wrong bear, and you can't know that for sure, unfortunately,
and until the bear is dead and you can see if it's the correct
animal or not. So I think times, yes, there probably are retaliatory
killings, but I don't think that's super super common in a lot of places
where that might happen. I think it's you know, it's it's expected that
maybe that bear is removed from the population, right Like we would never let
a bear in Yellowstone that had eaten somebody stay in that population exactly. That's
just something that you know when you live in those areas. I think that's
kind of expected that there are repercussions. But they're not going to take every
bear that's a problem bear or a bear that's gotten into conflict with people and
remove it from the population. They're going to give it a few chances and
see how it does and how it reacts to being hazed away or you know,
being relocated to a different area. So there are there are many many
steps that can be taken to kind of hopefully make the situation better for the
future so that it's less of an issue. Yeah, and then kind of
going off with that, I mean you touched on it a little bit at
the beginning, but what are the big challenges facing polar bears today? I
mean, I think climate change is kind of the big one everyone knows about.
But to go a little more detail, what do you think? Yeah,
I would say climate change for sure is probably the biggest one, just
because they rely so much on the ice for not just hunting, but like
a lot of their other you know, like life history events, Like polar
bears breed on the ice in the spring, so like they rely on that
ice surface to be able to find meat. They rely on the ice surface
obviously in order to get their seals that they eat, So when the ice
is disappearing, that creates an issue. But I saw in one of the
other questions that you had listed about like oil exploration and kind of like toxic
pollution stuff that might be going on up there. Yeah, we had a
patron, Jeremy Montoya, who asked about like how it was affecting them and
if they're dying from oil spills. Yeah, So I don't know that they've
had like too too much going on with like a lot of oil spills up
in the Arctic. Quite yet, but it is definitely something that we're kind
of like looking at, kind of given a side eye and thinking about for
the future. But a lot of people, i think, like to look
at the Arctic as just like this beautiful, pure frozen wilderness, right,
and that's not quite what it is. There is a very distinct food chain
up there, and polar bears are at the top of the food chain.
They're apex predators. But then you think about things like remember when DDT was
a big deal and it was kind of in everything in the environment and it
was affecting you know, bird eggs and things like that. There's kind of
like the same thing going on in the Arctic. And because polar bears are
at the top of the food chain, they're getting a lot of these what
we would they're called pops or persistent organic pollutants, and they just kind of
build up from the bottom of the food chain, and every step it goes
up, there's more and more of the stuff concentrated in what animals are eating.
Right. So it's been shown that polar bears that have high levels of
these persistent organic pollutants are actually also having lower levels of vitamin A, lower
levels of the correct thyroid hormones, lower levels of certain antibodies that they're supposed
to have, And these things are important, like they need them because it
helps with stuff like growth and reproduction and the ability to have a good immune
system and fight off diseases things like that. So it could have potentially an
effect on survival if you're not getting the right kinds of vitamins and you don't
have the right levels of hormones. Obviously that's not a good thing. And
in some places it's actually been shown that these persistent organic pollutants are being found
in the milk that mom provides to her cubs. So if you get really
high concentrations of that kind of stuff, of these chemicals in mom's milk,
it can actually poison the cubs, which then leads to a lower survival rate,
right goss. Yeah, So it's kind of like a compounding issue.
And then when you start thinking about adding in a lot more oil exploration emissions
leeks all of that kind of stuff. It goes directly into the water or
onto the sea ice. And you know, if a polar bear were to
swim through an area that had had an oil spill, you know it's going
to get into the fur, and then the fur might not be quite as
insulatory as it would be normally. And the polar bearers rely on their fat
lay and all of that really warm, fluffy fur to keep them warm,
and if it's not working correctly, they have to bump up their energy expenditure
to keep warm. Basically, so that could present an issue. Like anything,
if there's oil in the water or oil in the food that the bears
are eating, they can then ingest it through grooming, like licking their fur.
They can eat contaminated prey, and then they can have liver and kidney
damage because they've got oil in their insides essentially, So that's not good either.
And then the biggest thing I would think for oil and gas exploration is
that usually when these kinds of things move into these areas, it destroys habitat
a lot of times if you get an oil spill, like look at the
effects from the exon Vald's oil spill. We're still seeing stuff from that and
that's been how many years now. That kind of stuff sticks around, it
clings to the environment, and it makes it so that there are a lot
of long term consequences as well. So when you're talking about climate change,
that's kind of like what we're seeing right now up in center as the big
issue, but polar bears are dealing with a lot of other issues as well,
So it's kind of a sticky situation for them where they're trying to figure
out how do we continue to survive in this environment when we're kind of being
assaulted in all fronts. Absolutely, so, as we're talking about that global
change, how do you feel that global MEA has impacted polar bear attacks?
Specifically? Are you noticing that more bears are moving south or are they moving
north to Santhia that staysy around. Yeah, So I think the big answer
to that question is we really don't know. There are what we've considered nineteen
subpopulations or of management areas of polar bears in the Arctic, and we don't
have very good data on some of those populations, so we don't know,
Like some of our populations, we know they're stable, some populations we know
they're increasing, some populations we know they're decreasing, and some populations it's just
a big question mark we have no idea what's going on. And I think
a very important thing to remember is polar bears are big animals. They are
capable of traversing incredible distances, and when there's ice up there in the Arctic,
it doesn't really matter where the lines are for those subpopulations or management areas,
right those bears can go anywhere they want as long as there's a way
for them to get from point to point B. So you see bears in
certain populations crossing over into other population areas. Whether they're moving north or south
because of climate change, I don't know. We've seen some bears end up
in really ridiculous areas because they were out swimming and they were looking for ice
and they just never found it and they popped up on land somewhere far away
from where they started. So I think things like that could potentially become more
common. I don't know necessarily about bears moving south. I think they'd probably
try and stay wherever they could find food. But you know, if the
food source is south, maybe they will move south. I have no idea.
A lot of people in some of these northern communities and in Inuit communities
say that they haven't seen a decrease in bears at all. In fact,
quite the opposite. A lot of people say they see more bears now than
they ever did before. Wow. So it just really depends, I think,
on the location. But in certain areas, like some of the areas
that I'm familiar with and that I've like where my research takes place, I
think that's the main point is that when the ice disappears, it forces bears
on shore, and they're on shore for longer periods of time because the ice
is melting sooner in the spring and summer and it's not coming back until later
in the fall, And that means bears are on shore for a much longer
period of time than they have been previously. And when they're on shore,
they're not hunting for seals because they don't have that ice platform anymore. So
bears that are on shore are trying to save what energy they have because they're
not sure exactly when they're going to get back out onto the ice. But
also they might be nutritionally stressed. They might be skinny. It's been a
while since they had their last meal. If they didn't get fat enough during
their seal hunt, then they could still be looking for food, and bears
that are looking for food or going to come into communities, they're going to
come into towns, and just spending more time on shore means there's more chances
for them to come into contact with people because people live there. So you
know, what kind of options do they have? Right? A lot of
these communities, if theace assistance hunt whales, they have to take very very
specific precautions to make sure that they are storing that meat properly, because having
a whale carcass in your community could be like rolling out a welcome matt for
a hungry polar bear. Right, So it just depends, really, I
think a lot of it we don't know, but we are seeing certain trends
in certain places for sure. Gotcha. Well, okay, one thing that
you said that truly blew my mind before we end this, you said,
specifically, mother polar bears don't hibernate. Do you mean that, like all
polar bears don't actually hybridate, they just kind of going like a tour per
situation, or polar bears do not hibernate at all. Oh my gosh.
So like pregnant females will go into a din, so they kind of do
like what brown bears or black bears would do when they hibernate, but only
pregnant females will do that. They're the only ones that will, you know,
go into a den and they'll stay in a din and have her babies
and then she'll come out when they're old enough. But it's not like it's
not like every polar bear hibernates, like a brown bear or black bear would
do that. So like a brown bear or black bear that goes into a
din and hibernates is actually hibernating for you know, five six, seven months,
depending on where they live. But only pregnant polar bears will go into
a din so that she can have her cubs. So it's it's like a
hibernation process for them. But in a lot of cases, like when she
does this, when she finally comes out of the din, it's been eight
months, seven or eight months since the last time she ate anything, right,
So it is like a hibernation process. But that's what other bear species
do, but polar bears don't really hibernate like I think a lot of people
have kind of referred to me in the past as like a walking hibernation because
they don't actually go into a din and go to sleep for months like brown
and black bears will. They just kind of meander about on land, but
they're they're looking for food or they're just waiting for the ice to come in.
They're trying to minimize their energy expenditure because they don't know when their next
meal is going to be. So a lot of people will refer to it
as a walking hibernation, but it's not. It's not a hibernation at all.
That's so cool. Well, Danielle, that is all we had for
you, but we would love to know where people can find you if you
have a website that you want to promote. Sure. I am on Twitter
as a Grizzly Girl. Eighty seven is my handle, and I actually do
a thing most Tuesdays called Knock Knock, Who's Bear. I'm not sure if
anybody has seen it. Oh yes, it's so good. So on Tuesdays
at noon my time, So I'm in Saskatchewan, we don't do daylight Savings
time, so half the year I'm on Central Time and half the year I'm
on Mountain time. But on Tuesdays at noon I will post a picture of
a bear or a bear track, and I ask people if they can tell
me what species of bear it is and why, and then I when I
reveal the answer, I'll explain how to identify that particular photo, because it
can be really complicated sometimes to see the differences between a black bear or a
brown bear, or like just looking at a track can be complicated. But
I think it's really important for people to know what kinds of animals are in
the environment that they're out recreating in because you would handle a black bear encounter
very differently than you would handle a brown bear encounter or a polar bear encounter.
So it's important to know how to tell the differences between them and to
notice like the behavioral differences and the physical morphological differences and how those work and
how that makes them what they are. So yes, Grizzly Girl eighty seven
on Twitter, and I do knock Knock Who's Bear every Tuesday. Nick is
truly mind blown that I've never mentioned this to him before, because it's funny
because I see it every week and I've never thought to tell you, Nick,
what a name? Knock Knock, Who's Bear? Did you ever pay
someone for that? Or no? Actually somebody. I was just kind of
joking around and I was like, wouldn't this be funny if I if I
did this and somebody's like, yes, you should call it this, And
I was like, oh my goodness, you have to. I was like,
is it okay if I use that? And they're like absolutely, So
I've been doing it for three years now, I think, oh geez.
And I didn't even come up with a name for it. I was just
like, Oh, I'm just gonna do like a bear id game. It's
going to be so fun. And they're like, yes, you should call
it Knock Knock, Who's there? And here it is. So is there
a way for people to stay connected with your research? I mean, obviously
you're getting a PhD, so it's going to take a while. But do
you have like a lab website or anything? Yes, I think so,
But there is a lab website through University of Saskatchewan under Douglas Clark. He's
my supervisor and he has all of our information and like our little research blurbs
on his website. Yeah. I think like an easy way to find it
would just be to do a general Google search. But I also have a
research gate website. That has usually links to the papers that I've been on.
I used to have on my own personal website, but I haven't updated
it in forever, so I should probably get on that. But yeah,
if people are interested in that kind of stuff, like, I'll frequently post
trailcam photos from the project, you know, just kind of cute or interesting
pictures. I retweet bear stuff all the time on Twitter, and if anybody
really has any questions, like my dms are open on Twitter so people can
can ask me bare questions. I get people all the time who send me
pictures of like poop and tracks and stuff and they're like, what is this
And I'm like, you know, I do my best to try and figure
that out. Or people can submit pictures for Knock Knock Who's Bear if they've
got pictures that they want to share. So all of that kind of stuff,
you know, is there, and I am always willing. I know
most of us who are in academia who publish papers, we're willing to send
you papers if you just email us or send us a message on Twitter if
you're interested in something, because I know a lot of these papers are behind
pay walls and they're very difficult to access. We will always always send people
copies of our papers, so that kind of stuff not an issue at all.
Than Also, like, it's so apparent to me that we write these
academic papers for the general public, but sometimes they make zero sense to someone
who's not in the science field. Yeah, but there's still good graphics and
everything, So yeah, I would love to see your polar bear studies.
So I will definitely be hitting you up, oh for sure. And the
funny thing is is that a lot of these papers, like the research is
all funded by taxpayers, right, so why shouldn't they have access to it.
If somebody asks me for a copy of the paper, I'm going to
send it to them, Like it's only fair that you get to know what
your money is going to in terms of scientific research. So awesome, Well,
thank you so much, Danielle. This has been so great. You've
taught me so many things I had no idea about, like the fact that
polar bears don't hibridate. That's still blowing my mind. I just don't the
name of the Dame the polar Oh knock knock, Who's bear? Yeah we
have different takeaways, but sure, you know, different things are important to
different people. It's fine. One more thing that I do want to mention
really quick. I don't know if you guys saw it earlier, but there
is the Arctic Bears project that was released on Zuniverse this past February, and
it coincided with the International Polar Bear Day. And that's basically I don't know
if you guys have ever used universe before, but like Panthera does a lot
with Zooiverse, and like there's a Penguin project and all sorts of things.
But basically, they take these trail cam photos and they post them on Zooniverse
for you know, the general public to go through, and you can classify
photos based on what species you see in the picture. So we have released
a lot of our trailcam photos to Zoomiverse through the Arctic Bears project, So
you can go through and see the pictures of wolves and caribou and black brown
and polar bears and all these other animals that we get on our trail cameras,
and you can, you know, select the species from a list.
There's a field guide there that helps you identify. If you're not familiar with
artic species, you can tell, you know, how many animals are in
the picture, you can, i believe, select specific behaviors that the animals
are doing, and all of that information basically gets put into a huge database,
and then we can extract that data from the database and use it so
that we don't have to sift through millions of photos all by ourselves. Yeah,
that's awesome and it's super helpful for us. It just puts it like
into a really nice spreadsheet so that we can access all of that information.
It's like a queriable database that we can pull information from without having to look
at, you know, hundreds of photos of blowing snow. Yeah, you
know, we can kind of like sift that stuff out. So it's very
helpful and it's super fun. So people should go do that. It's going
to be live again later this fall into the winter once we get our latest
photos uploaded, but you can always go at any time and kind of click
through a bunch of the pictures that have already been classified. Yeah, I
will certainly link to that. Thank you so much, Danielle. This has
been great, sure, no problem. It's been really fun. I learned
so much from Danielle, Like I had no idea that polar bears were even
in Norway, and so we did the interview before for I researched the attack
portion for this episode, and I'm I was blown away that they had such
a range. Yeah, it's crazy how little we actually know about them or
knew about them. Like, thankfully now we've definitely gotten better with that,
especially since we've had some time to do the research and get some stories about
them. But going into that, we knew very dick nothing, Dick nothing,
Dick nothing. Wow, Yeah, who's that Richard? So I think
my favorite part of this interview slash just Danielle as a person. A lot
of the biologists that we speak to, and this is to no fault of
their own, when you are studying to conserve an animal, it can be
very uncomfortable to talk about that animal hurting people. Yeah, because your whole
point is that you want people to like that animal to help conserve it.
So I've found that a few biologists who've spoken to, like, I mean,
obviously, attacks for every animal that we talk about are rare, but
it seems like some people get uncomfortable talking about it. Danielle was stood up
like, oh, they'll kill you, they will come after you. You
gotta shoot them, which like obviously polar bear is do new conserving, but
also you need to be very careful with them. And I loved how realistic
she was about that, Like she did not play around, don't talk around,
yeah, because if you fuck around with polar bears, you die.
And this is something that is her life, Like she needs to be probably
ready to you know, kill a bear when she's out there during a research
yeah, which is she's actively worried about that, Yeah, which is crazy.
And she was saying like you need to have a person in the front
and probably the back to specifically just look for polar bears. Like I don't
know, once again, I mentioned it before, but I feel like we
always take for granted just feeling safe in the woods here in New England because
we don't have anything to worry about really great. Yeah, or if you
live in like England or something, you really have nothing to worry about it
because everything's dead. So yeah, I don't know. I loved it.
I loved how realistic she was about them. I learned a whole lot.
She was great with us too, which we definitely needed it a little bit.
Oh yeah, no, And I will say we recover very well from
the controversy at the beginning the Fat Bear week. My god, I know
you have a lot of strong feelings about the outcome. It's been like what
a month now, Yeah, and I'm still heated. So yeah, it'd
be all right. Would you like to discuss more? No, okay,
it's better for everyone if you shut up about it. Yeah, I agree
as someone who had to hear about it a lot. You don't have to
be my friend. Oh all right, Well I hit the end recording and
it was nice knowing you. That's been great. Thanks, thanks for having
me over, thanks to McDonald's. I'll see you later anytime. No,
so, yeah, do you have anything else? Dad got? All right?
Uh? Pull it? Bears a sick like cool fourth favorite Bear competitive
list. We went over this last time. I don't think I have a
list of favorite Bears. Oh you need to get on that. Yeah.
I think that's about it. I don't want to take up too long in
this outro either, because once again, this episode would be forever. We
just talked about all the things that we loved about Bears and Danielle. We
can almost ramble on Mike for hours. We won't we do? Yeah,
So anyways, thanks for joining us of episode thirteen point five of Get out
Alive. You can it's on Patreon dot com slash get it alive for all
the fun stuff that we do there, like you can vote on episodes,
you can ask people questions, which, like you heard in this episode,
we'll throw fun stuff at you sometimes like this. We're working on bonus episode
ideas and whatnot, which will look a little bit different from these episodes,
probably, but will still be fun, even more chaotic, probably, yeah,
definitely, probably the less censored version, which we're already not that censored.
We actually do a lot more than people know. It's just terrible.
People constantly complain about you swearing, and I'm like, hey, that explicit
things right there for a reason. Also, we cut so much stuff.
Yeah, yeah, this is pretty bad. Yeah, I'm a problem.
So anyways. You can also join us on get out a Live podcast dot
com for more information about this episode and links to everything, like where you
can find Danielle and some other things mentioned in the episode, like the polar
Bear tracker yep, super cool. You can rate us on Apple Podcasts and
subscribe wherever you're listening. You can follow us on Instagram at get out a
Live pod and Facebook at get Out a Live podcast, and you can follow
me on Twitter at the Angryologist Nick. I'm starting a rival podcast called Ashley
Smells, so feel free to go. Give that a listen, give that
a rate. It's great. Second me out by the time this is out.
Oh shit, now okay, nevermind describes for that. Yeah, keep
an eye out for Ashley Smells. And thank you to my good friend second
grade husband Josh Walsh for making our intro music. And we will see you
next week for a new animal tech story because you spoiled facts. Goodbye, Peace,