Netflix has a new documentary series—“Predators”—with incredible cinematography of some of the world’s apex carnivores, including the polar bears of Churchill in Manitoba, Canada. Churchill is known as the polar bear capital of the world (as well as the beluga whale capital) and it’s easy to see both animals in the wild on a trip to this subarctic Canadian town.
Released in September 2023 in the U.S., “Predators” is a documentary series narrated by Tom Hardy; it’s a co-production by Netflix and the U.K.’s Sky Nature (and was released in the U.K. in December 2022). Each of the first season’s five episodes focuses on one predator species—the lions, cheetahs and wild dogs of central Africa, the pumas of Chile’s Patagonia, and the polar bears of Canada’s subarctic. Accompanying the extraordinary footage, Hardy explains the challenges of being at the top of the food chain, particularly as climate change makes these animals’ habitats harder to survive in.
Episode four of “Predators” is about the polar bears that spend their winters on the sea ice of Hudson Bay and their summers on its shores, often around the town of Churchill, Manitoba. There are between 600 and 700 bears in the Western Hudson Bay population and, so far, 2023 is shaping up to be a record year for polar bears. Manitoba Natural Resources and Northern Development’s most recent report (September 11, 2023) states that conservation officers filed 116 polar bear occurrences so far this year: meaning bears got too close to people or the town itself 116 times and, sometimes, had to be warned away with a flare gun or temporarily isolated in the Polar Bear Holding Facility.
High season for Churchill’s polar bears is October and November. As winter approaches, more and more bears congregate on the shores of Hudson Bay as they wait for the sea ice to form so they can head out to hunt for their main food source, seals.
The polar bear is the largest carnivore on land: adult males weigh between 775 and 1,300 pounds and, when up on their hind legs, can stand 10 feet tall. As soon as the sea ice is thick enough to bear the bears’ weight, all but the pregnant mothers-to-be leave land far behind.
Polar Bears International, the nonprofit dedicated to conserving wild polar bears and their sea ice habitat, describes how pregnant polar bears dig snow caves on shore and give birth, often to twins, in December. The “Predators” polar bear episode begins with one brand-new family poking their heads out from inside their snow den until they fully emerge in the spring when the cubs begin outdoor life and their intensive survival training.
Also featured in the episode are the beluga whales that visit Churchill every summer—”Predators” even has rare footage of some
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Think of New York and an image of the skyscrapers of Manhattan likely comes to mind. The Empire State Building and the Rockefeller Center famously provide high-altitude views over that skyline — but there are other alternatives, whether hanging over the edge of a 100-storey building in Hudson Yards or sitting at a picnic table at a brewery in Brooklyn.
My paddle slips gently through calm ocean water as the kayak glides toward the mouth of Morro Bay Harbor. I approach a sandbar covered in resting cormorants, as sea otters float in nearby kelp, inky-eyed pups nestled on their mothers’ chests. On this windless morning, the marine layer paints the world in a gentle watercolor wash. In front of me, Morro Rock rises dramatically from the landscape.
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“We’re growing a small business and learning as we go,” said Claire Bowen as she arranged bushels of sweet and charmingly imperfect organic apples on a late-September afternoon. “We hope to cultivate connections between local farms and local tables.”
easyJet, Europe’s leading airline, has launched Orange Drop, a handpicked supply of recommendations and the latest offers, brought to customers every single week.
For fans of nostalgia TV as well as avid animal and travel lovers, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom is back in a big way. Sixty years ago, this beloved show innovated the nature adventure genre, enthralled viewers with its global destinations, won multiple Emmy Awards and galvanized conservation goals and gains. It offered an eagerly anticipated, families-gathered, weekly gaze at creatures in far-flung locales to a television audience that averaged 34-million Americans for much of its initial, astonishingly lengthy 25-year run. Between then and now, weaving through subsequent decades, Wild Kingdom had been transformed again and again, showcased on Animal Planet and as a web series. Now there is a fresh fourth project, the all-new Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, which will premiere October 7 on NBC-TV (as part of its “The More You Know” programming block on Saturday mornings), as well as via NBC.com and NBC VOD. It is co-hosted by wildlife expert Peter Gros (who joined the original series in 1985) and wildlife ecologist Rae Wynn-Grant, Ph.D., a National Geographic Society research fellow and host of the PBS podcast Going Wild. Currently primed for 26 episodes set in North America, Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild kicks off with journeys to California’s super-parched Mojave Desert for desert-dwelling tortoises, the Maine Coast for Atlantic puffins (nicknamed “parrots of the sea” because of their colorful triangular beaks), the Florida Coast for aqua-agile manatees and Austin, Texas, for high-soaring-quick-swooping Mexican free-tailed bats. I reached out to Gros and Wynn-Grant to share their behind-the-scenes insights and inspirations, as they forge modern Wild Kingdom paths, while still applauding the footsteps of legendary zoologists Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler, who, as co-hosts of the documentary show’s dawn in 1963, put this legacy wildlife wonderland on the map.