OTTAWA, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of visitors from around the world each fall flock to the town of Churchill in the far north of Manitoba, Canada, to join the townspeople for its unusual pastime: observing polar bears in the wild.
Yet few know that the town on Hudson Bay, which calls itself the polar bear capital of the world, is the kind of place where residents often leave doors unlocked so their neighbors have a quick escape should they come face-to-face with a polar bear.
"For most people who live in Churchill, it's just daily life," said Geoff York, senior director of conservation for Polar Bears International, which has a center in Churchill, in a recent interview with CBC Radio. "It's a part of the fabric of that community."
Churchill has developed certain strategies to minimize the conflicts between the bears and the residents, according to the radio report. In the early 2000s, they closed their open-air dump, so polar bears would not have any reward if they strolled into town.
The Manitoba government also helps to provide a polar bear alert program in Churchill, where conservation officers patrol, looking for bears, and respond to citizens' reports. In order to avoid relying solely on human eyes, Churchill is testing out a military radar to detect polar bears before they come into town.
