In Search of Polar Bears

Life Matters News Digest No. 77 November/December 2025

Yes, I know you haven't heard from me in a long while - for which I apologise. Unfortunately, life just intervenes sometimes, and it is impossible to achieve everything you want, no matter how hard you try, and you have to prioritise. But a bumper edition follows.

My wife, Tricia, also has the habit of spontaneously coming up with interesting things to do. Her latest idea was to go and see polar bears in the wild. I was tempted to write there "before they disappear" - but hopefully not. More on that later.

Canada is home to around 16,000 polar bears, about two-thirds of the world's estimated total population of between 22,000 and 33,000, also spread across Arctic regions in Alaska, Greenland, Russia and Norway.

The Southern Hudson Bay group in Canada has around 1,100 bears that congregate there in the summer and autumn, waiting for the Hudson Bay to freeze over.

Not far from the town of Churchill on Hudson Bay, there is the Western Hudson Bay subpopulation of around 600 polar bears, and these are the most accessible.

Churchill, known as the "polar bear capital of the world," has no highway to it, but can be reached by plane or a 45 to 48-hour train journey from Winnipeg (1694km or 1053 miles).

We flew in from Winnipeg on a regular plane charter organised by our hosts, Frontiers North. After checking our luggage at Winnipeg airport in the morning, we were told that we would not see it again until we arrived at our hotel in Churchill in the evening. We were therefore already suited, booted and thermally underwear clad for our arrival in cold weather.

Churchill, Manitoba, is classified as having a subarctic climate, with very cold winters. The average winter temperature is often below -20 °C (-4°F), and during its short, cool summers it rarely gets above 15°C (59°F). In fact, Churchill's position on the Hudson Bay means that it experiences around 300 days of sub-zero temperatures per year.

(By contrast, as I started writing this in the south of France on the 14th November, where we get sunshine on about 300 days a year, the outside temperature was an extraordinary 22.3 °C, with a very strong southerly wind blowing!)

As it turned out, when we arrived at Churchill airport on the 29th October, it was a "mild" 5 °C (41°F) as we boarded our bus for a tour of the Churchill area. One of our first stops was the "Polar Bear Holding Facility" (or "polar bear jail" as it's known locally), a warehouse where bears that repeatedly keep coming back into Churchill town are kept for a couple of weeks and then released.

Whilst the locals acknowledge that the town is built on a polar bear trekking route and they have no problem with them passing through, they are a dangerous animal for humans, and those that hang around looking for food become a problem.

Every night at 10.00 pm, a siren goes off to warn residents & visitors to go home, as it gets risky to hang around in the dark, and a bear team regularly jumps into action at any time of day or night when a bear is reported in the built-up area. Churchill is not large, with a resident population of around 900, and it very much feels like a frontier town. During the tourist season, the population more than doubles.

We were lucky. We saw our very first bears in the distance from the safety of our bus, a mum and two cubs.

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Polar bears live almost exclusively on seal blubber. They are not interested in seal meat, only the fat that surrounds the meat to keep the seals warm in the cold sea. The bear's diet is fat, rather than protein-based. However, once the ice melts in June, the bears have nothing substantial to eat until mid-November when the sea ice is thick enough to carry their weight again.

The mother bear in the video above has probably not had a meal herself for 4 months, but continues to feed her cubs with milk, losing a kilo (2.2 lbs) in body weight each day. The ice-free period used to be 113 -130 days. With global warming in recent decades, it is now becoming 130 -150 days.

A 400 -600kg female will lose up to 35% of her body weight during the 130-day period, a male weighing 800kg even more. As their onshore periods increase, while the sea is unfrozen, and they only occasionally graze on berries or seedweed, the necessary fat intake is denied them.

A female bear uses up her own fat to suckle her cubs for 1 - 2 years before they are fully independent. Longer periods of fasting may threaten the survival of cubs if the mother produces insufficient supplies of milk.

Another problem for the bears with their largely specialist diet is that as the seas warm from climate change, the fish that the seals feed on move to find cooler waters. The seals can move to a new maritime location fairly easily, but it is difficult for the polar bears to follow quickly.

After food at the restaurant next door to our hotel and a restful night's sleep (no "bear alarms" after the regular one at 10.00 pm), we made an early start the next morning after breakfast in a small local bus out to the tundra buggy base.

The tundra buggies are large vehicles with huge wheels that can accommodate up to 40 people. Their maximum speed is about 28mph, though most of the time they are much, much slower than that to navigate the potholed, flooded tundra and to reduce danger and disturbance to wildlife.

The latest models are all electric and cost between CAD 500,000 and CAD$1 million each to custom-build. They are specially engineered and optimised so that they can operate in sub-arctic temperatures as low as -50°C.

Whilst our journey to Churchill produced significant amounts of CO2 in environmental terms, Frontiers North, using profits from the money we and others have paid them, contributes large sums to the Climate Alliance, Tundra Connections, Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and especially Polar Bears International.

Not only have Frontiers North built a tundra buggy for Polar Bears International (PBI) free of charge, but they have also given them one of their 12 permits to enter the Churchill Wildlife Management Area, where we spent two days, and the use of their base.

PBI's EV Tundra Buggy One (seen in the top right-hand picture above) is equipped with cameras, staff accommodation and a studio where they can livestream and add commentary to polar bear activity in the area. It was launched on one of the days we were there.

Beyond most local people's living memory, there was no snow on the ground at the end of October 2025 when we first arrived, and white polar bears were easy to spot. However, the body clocks of Ptarmigans (a small chicken-sized grouse or quail) and Arctic Hares, responding to the shortening hours of daylight, had already shed their summer feathers and fur.

So both were pure white and remained almost perfectly still when our tundra buggy arrived, believing somewhere in their minds that "we could not see them in the snow!" This was great for us as photographers, but not for them if we had been hunters.

As you can see from my first arctic hare photo (bottom left), it was really a game of "Where's Waldo" as they hid in the low-growing tundra willow! The 2nd photo, to give you a better idea, is courtesy of Grok AI.

As the hares turn white in the high Arctic, only the tips of their ears remain black, while those around Hudson Bay still retain some grey shading on their heads and backs in winter. To escape predators, Arctic Hares can hit speeds of up to 60 kmh (40 miles per hour) and leap 3 metres (10 feet) in the air from a standing start.

We were taken too by the Ptarmigans' heavily feathered feet. Like the hares' fur-covered feet, these act like snowshoes during deep snow weather, spreading their weight (the Ptarmigans' genus name is "Lagopus," which means "hare-foot" in Greek).

To get more insulation in the cold winter, Ptarmigans create "snow roosts" by burrowing into the snow. Rare among birds, they also moult 3 times a year.

As the day progressed, we were privileged to see an increasing number of polar bears, sometimes alone and sometimes in pairs. This curious young fellow obligingly came right up to the tundra buggy.

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The snow turned up in flurries on our second evening in Churchill, and by the next morning, there was a shallow coating of snow on the ground everywhere.

The bears we saw in pairs were often snoozing, but then would wake up, stand on their hind legs to their full height and start playfully sparring. After a few rounds, they would then collapse on the ground again, snuggle up close to each other and return to sleeping (dreaming of their next meal, perhaps?).

Sparring is a natural process of testing out their strength, though during the mating season, it can become more aggressive, and domination fights can end in injuries.

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As you can see below, polar bear footprints are pretty big. Their front paws are both their main attacking and defensive weapon. With some male polar bears, the front paws are 30 cm across - as big as a 12-inch dinner plate - with enormous muscular force behind them.

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A single blow from an adult male polar bear can break the neck or skull of a beluga whale or a large seal. Seals, the bear's main food source, can only remain underwater without recharging with air for about 15 minutes.

When the ice is frozen, the seals ram the ice from underneath to smash the ice and create blow holes, which they can return to at regular intervals. The polar bears know this and wait by the holes, pouncing on the seals when they return to breathe, and killing them with a blow to the head or snagging them in their enormous jaws.

This is why, when a long time ago when I worked at Bristol Zoo in the UK (see the book below), the polar bear was considered the most dangerous animal they had. I remember seeing a vet and keepers at the zoo, darting a polar bear with anaesthetic and then, when it appeared to be unconscious, going into the compound to remove a bad tooth.

In the middle of the operation, the very strong bear overcame the anaesthetic and started to move. The vet and the keepers holding its mouth open probably broke world running records getting out of the compound as quickly as they could!

It is, of course, much more satisfying to see animals in the wild in their natural habitats, and I feel privileged to have done so.

I find it difficult to justify zoos at all now, except perhaps on conservation of rare species grounds. A visit to Berlin Zoo a few years ago left me feeling depressed and angry at seeing all the bored and depressed mammals incarcerated there.

Altogether, we saw 19 different (I think!) polar bears in our 3 days in Churchill. My thanks to Ward Cameron, our guide, and "JP," our tundra buggy driver, who both informed and entertained us genially from their long experience observing polar bears in their natural habitat.

My grateful thanks, too, to my wife Tricia for making this expedition happen (what will she come up with next?).

Although the short polar bear viewing season has now ended (the bears have headed back to the ice for a well-deserved meal), you can find more information about Polar Bears International and watch their videos, HERE:​

Polar Bears International is dedicated to conserving polar bears and the sea ice they depend on, raising global awareness of their plight and conducting research that informs polar bear conservation.

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Ten Men Tell Why They Chose Quillan (including the chapter I’ve never shared before…)

Regular readers may remember that last year I advertised a book edited by my friend Jo O'Neill, about the lives of 10 women who had moved to Quillan (where I live) in the south of France and why they did so.

The book was called "Baguettes and Blanquette," Blanquette being the local sparkling wine - our equivalent of champagne!

Jo has now put together another book written by 10 men who have moved to Quillan, in which they write about the influences that made them do so, why they made the choice of here rather than somewhere else and what they enjoy about it.

The men's book is called "Baguettes and Boules," and I have contributed the last chapter, in which I reveal much of the early part of my life and how it shaped me and brought me to where I am today.

(Writing that also meant that I did not have enough time to write the newsletter as well - hence the long delay.)

So, if you are curious to learn about my well-spent youth and all the things I got up to on my travels, then here is your chance.

You will read about my time sitting on a mountain on a Greek island contemplating nature and reading Shakespeare, walking 500 miles across the Greek mainland, sleeping through an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and time spent in an African prison. Even a little about my "love life!"

If you celebrate Christmas, consider persuading someone to buy it for you, and if not - buy it anyway! I am sure you will enjoy it, and your purchase will be much appreciated by us all.

Available online from your nearest Amazon.

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The 53-Foot Sailing Ship That Ended up in the Middle of the Prairies

Hudson Bay in Canada, where we went to see the polar bears, is also well known for the Hudson Bay Trading Company (HBC). HBC, which was founded by the British in 1670 and, more than 300 years later, it was still trading, though recently, in 2025, it went into liquidation.

I mention this because on our way back to Europe after our trip to Churchill bear watching, we had some time in Winnipeg, Canada, before our next flight. We used it to spend several hours in Winnipeg's excellent Manitoba Museum.

The Manitoba Museum houses more than 2.9 million artefacts and specimens, many displayed in 9 galleries with interactive displays on the history of Hudson Bay Company fur trading in Canada, the lives of the indigenous people surviving in the harshest of winter conditions, geological and environmental history, and much more.

In October this year, unfortunately before we got there, the Planetarium in the museum held a "Queen: Heaven Planetarium Experience" mixing the band Queen's music with cosmic landscapes of planets and stars. That sounded amazing and unsurprisingly was sold out.

However, the highlight of going around the museum was undoubtedly finally walking into an enormous room that featured a life-size replica of the "Nonsuch," the original British ship that sailed from the UK to Hudson Bay in 1668 and led to the founding of the Hudson Bay Trading Company.

The replica was built to mark the 300th anniversary of the Hudson Bay Company (1670 -1970). Built in the UK using 17th-century techniques and materials, the exact copy of the original 53-foot (16.2 m) ketch – two-masted, 42 tons, with a crew of only 12 - was also named the "Nonsuch" by the UK's Princess Margaret and launched on the 29th April 1970.

In the summer of 1970, the replica ship sailed across the Atlantic to Montreal in 3 months, stopping only in Ireland and the Azores. Arriving in Canada, the ship toured the eastern seaboard and the Great Lakes ports in the US, and was visited by 1 million people.

Finally, the "Nonsuch" replica sailed up the Red River via a complex of inland waterway systems and arrived in Winnipeg on the 8th September 1974 to be installed later in its final home at the Manitoba Museum.

The ship is housed in a huge gallery recreating a 1660s Hudson Bay shoreline with a dock, water, harbour buildings, the night sky/daylight, and the sounds that you would have heard at the time had you been there.

If you are ever in Winnipeg, I highly recommend you give the museum a visit!

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The Woman Who Saved the Southern Plains Bison

When I saw the display of the Indian chasing down a family of buffalo in the Manitoba Museum, I felt a little queasy, but took the photo anyway because the life-size 3D tableau was so striking.

I felt slightly queasy because I knew that between 30-60 million bison/buffalo had been slaughtered across North America in the 19th century, reducing the bison population to 300 in the US by 1900.

The reasons for such excessive hunting were the demand for hides for leather work and belts in Europe, policies of starvation towards First Nation peoples to create "peace," and the arrival of the railroads.

With the building of railroads, instead of taking weeks to get bison hides to the cities, the cost of which sometimes exceeded the worth of the hide in the first place, they were now delivered in days, and industrial slaughter began.

There were even "bison safaris" where travellers were encouraged to shoot at the animals from train windows for "sport."

It was therefore heart-warming to come across the story of Mary Ann Dyer (1839-1926), affectionately known as "Molly," who, after many hardships, including losing both her parents at the age of 14 and raising five younger brothers, married the Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight.

After ranching in Texas and then Colorado, she and her husband returned to Texas and, backed by investors, established in 1877 the JA Ranch, covering 1 million acres on the Texas Panhandle. By this time, the mass killing of bison was in full swing.

JA Ranch was so big that Molly's nearest neighbours were 75 miles away. She mucked in and drove supply wagons, managed the ranch when her husband was away, and looked after the cowboys, mending their clothes, teaching them to read and write, and healing their bodies when they were sick or injured.

However, Molly, having earned the title of "Mother of the Panhandle," is best known for what she did next. Feeling compassion for many of the orphaned bison calves abandoned after their parents were slaughtered, she persuaded her husband to give her 600 acres and hand-reared the young bison until they were able to fend for themselves.

Eventually establishing the Goodnight Buffalo Herd, Molly Goodnight effectively saved the southern plains bison from complete extinction. Today, descendants of her herd are still grazing in Caprock Canyons State Park.

There are currently between 400,000 - 500,000 bison in the United States today, and another 160,000 - 165,000 in Canada.

A conservation success story thanks to Molly Goodnight and her successors.

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A New Project for 2026?

The information here, I have already emailed to several hundred people on my mailing list, but I excluded many that I was pretty sure would not be interested. But I may be wrong!

If you are anything like me, then I know that you are probably struggling to keep up with paying bills and making ends meet, hoping that there is still something left at the end of the month.

(My exciting adventures around the world are down to my generous wife, who lives in the UK. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to treat her to a trip expenses-free?)

Your wages or salary - or in my case, a state pension and a small income - do not go far enough.

Inflation is relentless, and the cost of food, transport, gas, electricity and water goes up and up every year. Every month it often seems!

I have therefore decided to do something about it in 2026 and set up another income stream using the Internet.

Did you know that the global affiliate commissions market in 2025, paid to individuals (ordinary people mainly working from home, not companies), is estimated at between $13 - $16 billion.

I would like a small share of that - how about you? That's why I'm getting into affiliate marketing - earning commissions by recommending products I genuinely believe in.

This is not some “get-rich-quick” scheme promising you $ millions, but a genuine way of initially paying your monthly bills and then building a part-time or full-time business.

Nor am I asking you to become an "influencer" or share your dance moves on Tik Tok!

​I just recommend you watch this video by an honest, down-to-earth marketing expert whom I have followed for 10 years.

He has built a successful internet affiliate commission business and now shares his step-by-step techniques and 15 years of experience with thousands of others.

If you would like to join me on this journey, then don't wait; 2026 will soon be here. Let's stop struggling and turn things around. I want more financial freedom and independence, and I am sure you do too.

And if you have any questions, just email me at petercliffordonline@gmail.com and I will be happy to answer.

Credits: My thanks to Karen for contributing material. Photo & Video Credits: Peter Clifford/Tricia Dair/Paula Martin/Grok AI, Jo O'Neil, Burton Historical Collection/Detroit Public Library/ Charles & Ann Goodnight Ranch Historical Site/Schwartz Cottage Gallery/Panhandle Plains Historical Museum Archives/Charles Goodnight Historical Centre, Rob Cornish, Mediapart.fr/ The Independent.

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If you have enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it to friends, family, acquaintances, or anyone you think might be interested in subscribing. That would be appreciated - many thanks in advance.

END PIECE

Two major world events are getting increasingly less coverage in the media these days.

The first one is Gaza. Despite an agreed "peace agreement" between Hamas and Israel, the pain and desperation of around 2.1 million Gaza residents continues.

With more than 70,000 Gazans dead, almost half of them women and children, the grief for those remaining must be overwhelming. Apart from those suffering from starvation, there are as many as 171,000 wounded from explosions and gunfire, their lives changed irrevocably.

Between 70% and 92% of the housing and 94% of Gaza's 36 hospitals have been damaged or destroyed.

If you have no home other than a tent when nights are cold in the Middle East, no easy access to electricity, water or sanitation, you are injured, sick or starving and grieving for a family member lost, then there will be no warmth or cheer this winter.

No one in their right mind approves of what Hamas did in October 2023.

Nor can they approve of Israel's disproportionate genocidal actions.

This is not "anti-semitic" (an easy card to play), "anti-religious" or "anti-Israel" - just, given the history of the Jewish diaspora, a profound sadness that they learned nothing from their dreadful experiences in the preceding centuries.

The second genocidal situation is the ongoing frenetic attack on Ukraine by Russia. Despite losing approximately 1 million men, dead or wounded, Russia continues fighting, with many clear statements that it would like to exterminate Ukraine and all Ukrainians.

I may be proved wrong, but the current peace talks appear to be going nowhere while Putin, aided and abetted by Trump, insists on having yet more territory than he has grabbed already.

Ukrainians are very resilient. But it can be no fun spending night after night in an underground shelter, wondering if your home or apartment is being destroyed or if your husband, brother, sister, mother or father is still alive on the frontline.

So please spare a thought for all of those suffering in this way over Christmas, and let us hope for better, more compassionate outcomes in 2026.

Hats off too for all the wonderful men and women of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), who still operate in Gaza under appalling circumstances, and the rescue teams who risk their lives every day in Ukraine looking for the dead and injured.

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On a more cheerful note, I wish you all a Very Happy Christmas, and definitely a more Prosperous 2026.

My local council pushed the boat out this year, covering the chateau which sits above my house with lights. I just hope we local folks do not get the electricity bill!

Enjoy the holiday season, and I look forward to communicating with you again in 2026.