Caring About Bears

Dedicated to the worldwide conservation of the great white bear through research and education, Polar Bears International (PBI) was founded in 1992 by Canadian wildlife photographer Dan Guravich, whose work with polar bears was internationally known. Before his death in 1997, he served as both PBI’s first president and then as chairman of its board. Under his leadership, the nonprofit organization would become the most complete source of polar bear information in the world, with a board of directors and advisory council drawn from across the U.S. and Canada. Its quarterly newsletters, accessible through its website, provide up-to-the-minute reports on the latest polar bear research, including the effects of global warming on the bears’ habitat.

PBI’s innovative Polar Bear Leadership Camp, now in its third year, will be drawing 12 high school students and six teachers to Churchill, Manitoba, this fall for the annual polar bear migration. Working with scientists in the field, students report back to their classmates around the world via daily Web journals. Last year, these Ambassadors of the Arctic gave presentations to 8,700 fellow classmates, and their Web journals were read by more than 61,000 people. Later, through television interviews and newspaper articles, they introduced millions more to the polar bears’ world. Institutions participating in student selection include Parks Canada, Manitoba Conservation, Winnipeg School District, Oregon Zoo, The Alaska Zoo, The Maryland Zoo, San Diego Zoo, Sea World Australia, and Cologne Zoo in Germany.

Each fall, PBI arranges an informative lecture series in Churchill, featuring National Geographic photographers and others. The organization also provides the for-profit tour operators of Churchill with top zoologists, whose informal presentations aboard the Tundra Buggies® were seen by 4,000 bear-watchers last year. This fall, PBIs experts—led by Dr. Jane Waterman and Dr. Jim Roth—will also be positioning a number of noninvasive cameras at key migratory points along the Churchill bear corridor. Six teams of high school students from around the world will assist them in collecting data. With the help of sophisticated software, the remotely monitored images will yield such valuable data as the bears’ height and weight and—by examining whisker patterns—the actual identity of individual bears. Some 50,000 viewers are expected to see highlights of this program via PBI's website.

In addition to such educational efforts, PBI helps support several research projects that benefit polar bears. Among these are a maternity den study in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); a census of Beaufort Sea bears; a study to determine the polar bear’s hearing range (which will help set guidelines for industrial activities); and annual funding of a scientific presence on Russia’s Wrangel Island, the largest polar bear denning site in the world.

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