Polar bear webcam

Wapusk National Park

This 11,475 km2 park, at the transition between boreal forest and arctic tundra, protects one of the largest polar bear maternity denning areas in the world! Nature lovers also watch for arctic foxes, arctic hares, wolves, caribou and wolverine as well as more than 200 bird species that call the park home.

Fall is Polar Bear Season in northern Manitoba, and throughout October and November you can check out what’s going on in real time in Wapusk National Park! Every autumn, polar bears gather at Cape Churchill, along the Hudson Bay coast, waiting for the sea ice to form. Polar bears depend on sea ice as a platform from which to hunt ringed seals, their main food source.

Polar Bears International and explore.org have placed a webcam at Cape Churchill, in Wapusk National Park.

Watch a live feed from the Cape Churchill cam, Wapusk National Park on the explore.org website.

Parks Canada is excited to work once again with Polar Bears International and explore.org to offer this window on the polar bears in Wapusk National Park. Like Parks Canada, both of these organizations are dedicated to providing authentic learning experiences about wildlife. 

Wapusk National Park: The Bear Facts

  • Most of the polar bears in the Western Hudson Bay population are born in Wapusk National Park, which protects one of the world’s largest known concentrations of polar bear maternity dens, where female bears give birth.
  • Cape Churchill is located on the northern coast of Hudson Bay, within the boundaries of Wapusk National Park. This Park measures 11,475 square kilometres (about the same size as the island of Jamaica, the country of Belgium or 2 Prince Edward Islands!)
  • While male bears, non-breeding females and juveniles gather along the coast, waiting for the ice, the pregnant females are in the denning areas, approximately 70 km inland, within Wapusk National Park. The cubs are born between the end of November and the beginning of December. Mothers and cubs emerge from the dens in February/March to make the trek to Hudson Bay, where the females begin their hunting season.

Polar Bears International (PBI) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the worldwide conservation of the polar bear and its habitat through research, education, and action. PBI provides scientific resources and information on polar bears and their habitat to institutions and the general public worldwide.

explore.org is a philanthropic media organization and multi-media arm of The Annenberg Foundation, as part of its Pearls of the Planet initiative, a variety of live feeds that aim to help people fall in love with the world again. 

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