“It’s pretty easy to know when there’s a bear in your community – you hear the shots going off,” says Churchill’s mayor, Mike Spence. “That’s the conservationists’ patrols – they use a 12-gauge shotgun with a noise-banger cartridge on it as a deterrent. The sound also means our people know there’s a bear in the community.”
The town of Churchill, on the west shore of Hudson Bay in the far north of Manitoba, Canada, is known as the polar bear capital of the world. The fact that “bangers” – rather than live rounds – are being used here marks a significant shift in attitudes. “Back in the early 1970s, people would shoot a bear,” says Spence. “Now people use a shotgun to move the bear out of the community.”
