This blog was written by Peter Riger, Vice-President of Conservation at the Zoo. Peter is currently leading a tour in Churchill. This is the latest from his travels.

The Houston Zoo is leading it’s first tour with Natural Habitat Adventures to see the Polar Bears of Churchill, Manitoba. The most accessible viewing area for Polar Bears in the world. We are bringing two groups of 13 people north to the sub-arctic tundra to see these magnificent bears.

It is a fairly easy trip from Houston to Manitoba’s capital city Winnipeg where we overnight at the Fort Garry Hotel and catch up on a bit of local history of the region. Travelers have an option of a day early city tour to a prairie grassland marsh and tour of the Manitoba Museum and city or overnight in Winnipeg and fly out to Churchill the next morning. The charter flight from Winnipeg to Churchill, part of the trip, is a quick two hours and we set down on the edge of Hudson Bay where Polar Bears wait out the short summer for the bay to freeze so they can hit the ice for the winter and spring in search food.

Upon arrival it is a quick lunch, hotel check-in and tour of the Eskimo Museum before hitting the tundra in a specially modified tundra rover for a 4-5 hour evening excursion. There are a number of species to see here such as Arctic Fox, Red Fox, Snowy Owl, Lemming and Ptarmigan and the geology is fascinating but we are here looking for Polar Bears- which only took us an hour to stumble across 5 males lounging and okay fighting while they wait for the winter ice to form.

More to come as we spend the next two days out on the tundra.

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