Churchill: a harsh Canadian city where there is a prison for polar bears

On the coast of the Hudson's Bay, there is a small Canadian town called Churchill. He is famous throughout the world for the fact that there are a lot of polar bears. On the one hand, this fact made the city extremely popular among tourists, but on the other, it became a real disaster for the residents of the city. The animals tortured the inhabitants of the small town so much that they decided to re-educate them and created here the only prison in the world for polar bears.

Churchill is located in the north of Manitoba. This is an extremely sparsely populated region, and to the capital of the province, the city of Winnipeg, as much as 1,600 kilometers. The entire population of the town does not exceed 1000 people, most of which are representatives of the indigenous peoples of North America, Indians and Inuit, there is also a large percentage of mestizos.

Oddly enough, but the remoteness of the city and the low development of the region favorably affected the development of tourism. The untouched landscapes of the Arctic, the northern lights, an abundance of whales and other marine life, which you can admire from the shores of the Hudson's Bay, as well as a variety of wild land animals, attract a large number of tourists every year. But the most important thing for which travelers come here is the opportunity to meet with polar bears.

There are so many of these animals that the city of Churchill even received the status of the world capital of polar bears. In the city itself and its environs there are many warning signs that do not allow gape tourists to relax: "Caution, polar bears!". But why are there so many of them in this place?

Polar bears come to Churchill in the summer. In the warmer months, around the city there are several hundred bears, and in some years their number reaches thousands of individuals. Hunger drives the bears here. With the onset of summer, ice in the waters of the Hudson's Bay melts, bears lose their main way of getting food - hunting for seals and other pinnipeds on ice. Polar bears, as a rule, prey on seals, waiting for them near a wormwood in the ice, when they emerge in order to breathe. But when the ice melts, the seal becomes invulnerable, and the bear remains without food. Hungry bears migrate deep into the continent in search of food, and human settlements always attract the attention of predators.

There really are a lot of bears in Churchill, and cases of attacks on people are not uncommon. To protect local residents, the city authorities decided on unprecedented measures: in the 1980s, a prison for polar bears was organized in the city. Initially, the premises, which used to be a military base, could accommodate 20 troublemakers, but today the number of guests has increased to 28. All polar bears that appear in the city and pose a danger to residents are caught by a special service under the Ministry of Natural Resources of Canada.

Aggressive bears are euthanized and transported to prison for re-education. The essence of the method is that the bears try to form negative memories of visiting Churchill and its environs. For this, the bears are kept on a strict diet - they are given only water. After the expiration of the stay, and it ranges from several days to several weeks, the bears are again euthanized and sent by helicopter to the coast of the bay. As a rule, this happens in the fall, when ice begins to form in the bay, which means that bears can begin to hunt pinnipeds. All bears caught and undergoing re-education receive a bright mark at the withers. But, as practice shows, not all violators of the law are amenable to re-education, since the tagged individuals will again come across to the ministry employees for next year.