Remote Canadian town programs radar to spot approaching polar bears

  • 11/10/2020
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Churchill, Canada (Reuters) - Along the frosty coast of Hudson Bay, hundreds of polar bears have been wandering for weeks, waiting for the wintertime sea ice to form so they can return to hunting ringed seals.Until then, they represent a danger to the 900 people living in nearby Churchill - a remote, sub-Arctic town in Canada famous for the visiting carnivores. The town is working on a plan to prevent conflicts between hungry bears and humans, using a new radar system that can watch and warn when a bear approaches and do so in a snowstorm and during the dead of night. “The radar can see through all of that,” said Geoff York, senior conservation director at Polar Bears International who has been “training” the system’s artificial intelligence this year to recognize bears on the tundra near Churchill. “It’s one more way to keep communities or camps safe.” Next year, the system will be deployed for the first time at a tourist campsite near Longyearbyen, a former coal-mining town on Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, where a Dutch man was killed by a polar bear in August.

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