Embrace change, they say, or become a casualty. This adage weighed heavily on my mind during my latest research trip to the Arctic. Repeatedly, I found myself clutching the .303 calibre rifle over my shoulder — a piece of equipment I once considered unnecessary.
As my research assistants and I crossed the tundra of Victoria Island in northern Canada, firearms were only the most obvious addition to our gear. Each of us carried a whistle around our neck, a canister of bear spray on our hip, and new alertness in our routine. Back at our camp near Wellington Bay, Nunavut, an electric fence surrounded our tents. Grizzly bears were new inhabitants on this island. Safety called for different provisions and a different mindset.
After three decades, I had returned north with a purpose: to assess how tundra plants were responding in a rapidly changing climate. For my assistants and me, the plan was straightforward. We would return to the exact sites I had studied some 30 years earlier, to evaluate how they had changed during those intervening years.
