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Communicating with Bears: Polar Bears - Page 4

© Gerald Eugene Smith

Big Andy was slow and somewhat clumsy but just huge and immensely powerful. The other bears accepted him as co-alpha male with Charlie and treated him respectfully too. Big Andy, for his part, accepted the researchers and was as tolerant and friendly as Charlie had been, and hung around the camp too. The two bears were just inseparable and the researchers often followed them out onto the ice to observe their hunting technique. None of the other bears would allow the researchers to do this, or generally get near them. Big Andy had one highly unusual trait for a polar bear---he hated to get wet and would walk for miles on land to avoid swimming across a relatively short stretch of water. But he loved to nibble on seaweed, so Charlie would dive down to the bottom and bring it up for his big friend, who would be enthusiastically begging at the edge of the ice. When either bear killed a seal, they would freely share it with their partner.

The researcher was enchanted by his experiences with the two bears and tried to get the area around the station declared a sanctuary to protect them. To his utter and complete horror, the provincial governer decided to remove the researchers from the station and instead allow hunters to kill 20 bears in the general area. The researcher later learned that they just stood in the doorways of the huts and took shots from hiding without any attempt at sportsmanship at all (polar bears have rarely been hunted with sportsmanship). Big Andy and Charlie were almost certainly the first victims and paid with their lives for their trust and friendship in humans.

I know of only one modern researcher who freely walks among polar bears; he is a Russian named Ovsyanikov. Mr. Ovsyanikov has spent 8 years studying the polar bears on Wrangel Island (off the coast of Far Eastern Siberia), at another remote research station on a beach where walruses gather. Numerous bears hang around in the summer when the ice melts and leaves them stranded, hoping to get lucky with one of the walruses. The residence cabin turned out to be one of their favorite hangouts. The first day they were there, they had up to half a dozen polar bears peeping in the windows and sniffing at the door. Finding this too unnerving, Mr. Ovsyanikov and his partner went outside and shooed the bears away from the cabin so that they could put the shutters up. The insatiably curious bears soon came back but the researchers were able to sleep in peace.

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