Right from the start, however, he realized that safety was too vital an issue to be ignored. What he needed was an all-purpose field vehicle that would enable humans to observe polar bears in their natural habitat without endangerment or disturbance to either species. Recalling the swamp buggies used to navigate the marshes of Louisiana, Guravich showed a picture of one to Churchill businessman Len Smith, who proceeded to build the first Tundra Buggy® along the same principles. Instead of the swamp buggy's hollow metal wheels, however, Smith's vehicle would run on huge rubber truck tires. Inflated to a pressure of only six pounds (three kilograms), they would enable the Buggy to move safely across spongy tundra and snow as well as jagged rocks and ice. Inside, warmed by a propane heater, a dozen or so passengers would be able to observe the bears in an unobtrusive way.

Tundra Buggy® Lodge

Each year Smith and his partners built more of the high-riding vehicles. To accommodate overnight excursions by a growing number of researchers and film crews, they started building auxiliary wheel-and-axle trailers for gear, provisions, and sleeping space—all to be pulled like box cars behind the well-powered Tundra Buggies®. Soon the tourists started coming. By the time the operation was acquired by Frontiers North Adventures in 1999, the Tundra Buggy® was being used as a polar bear tour vehicle as well as an engine for a traveling lodge. John Gunter, spokesman for Frontiers North Adventures, likens the mobile lodge—once it's positioned on the tundra—to a space station: "After days on the tundra, touring Tundra Buggies® dock to the lodge like spaceships." Inside, guests move freely from car to car, as in any other wilderness lodge. The lodge consists of two sleeping cars equipped with bunk beds, wash closets, and showers, as well as a lounge car and a dining car.

For many guests, getting close enough to lock gazes with a bear—through a barrier of panoramic windows—is the highlight of the excursion. It can make "the hairs on your neck stand up," says Gunter. For closer communion with the bears and the environment, individual Tundra Buggies® are equipped with external observation decks. Like the windows on the lodge, Tundra Buggy® windows are ten feet (three meters) off the ground and beyond the reach of sometimes aggressively curious bears, who often behave like sightseers themselves.

What began as functional transportation for scientists and photographers thus evolved into a mobile lodge, which now accommodates a number of the 10,000 bear-watchers who show up in Churchill every year. Film crews, zoologists, and other researchers, however, continue to make up a portion of these guests.

Now phased out of use for tourists, the original Tundra Buggy®—Buggy #1—has been refurbished for National Geographic's Polar Bear Cam. It's equipped with movable cameras attached to the outside of its chassis and is broadcasting live footage of polar bears onto the Internet and all over the world. Along with the rest of the fleet, it is playing a vital role in expanding polar bear education and consciousness as well as conservation awareness.