9 Ways To Preserve The Polar Regions For Future Generations

9 ways to preserve the polar regions for future generations

Aspiring polar explorers learn about sustainability and conservation on polar voyages with Quark Expeditions

By Doug O’Neill, Quark Expeditions 

 

It was one of those travel moments that was both Instagram-perfect—yet simultaneously soul-stirring. I stood on the deck of Ocean Adventurer as it sailed into Krossfjord, a 30-km long fjord on the west coast of Spitsbergen in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Most of my fellow passengers were at breakfast so I had the deck to myself, with my camera at the ready, my eyes peeled on the horizon for my first glimpse of Lilliehöök Glacier, and my ears alert for the signature thunder of glacier calving.

 

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In the midst of all that anticipation of nature’s drama unfolding before me, I was suddenly overcome with a sense of quiet, a stillness that brought with it a razor-sharp clarity of my surroundings.  My mind began to run through an inventory of every stunning image I had experienced in the days leading up to this moment: the sculpted icebergs, the expansive glaciers, the snow-capped mountains, the long-abandoned historic sites, the polar bears prowling along the ice edge, the reindeers that cantered past me when I was on a shore landing, the walruses that gazed at me as I kayaked 30 metres away, of the whales spotted from the ship, and of cliff-tops covered in thousands of nesting Brunnich’s guillemots.

 

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And in my private polar epiphany, I was overcome not only with an intense appreciation for this pristine polar wilderness before me but also with a desire to protect it for every future visitor who came after me.

 

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This realization was by no means unique to me—it’s a moment shared by many who visit the Arctic or Antarctic. And this raised a fairly basic question: what can guests do to help preserve the pristine polar regions?

 

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For this answer, I turned to my colleague, Lyndsey Lewis, Operations + Sustainability Manager at Quark Expeditions, a long-time sustainability advocate and one of the forces behind Polar Promise, Quark Expeditions’ holistic sustainability framework for protecting the polar regions.

 

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9 ways to be kind to the planet on your next polar voyage 

By Lyndsey Lewis, Operations + Sustainability Manager 

 

  1. Pack and use only reusable bottles (the only option when on a voyage with Quark Expeditions), coffee cups and reusable bags that you can take home with you.
  2. Choose refillable toiletry containers or non-plastic packaging that are free of microbeads. Your Quark Expeditions cabin is equipped with refillable dispensers of body wash and shampoo.
  3. Don’t introduce non-native species. Pack clean gear, including clothing, footwear, and bags. Decontaminate boots before leaving and upon returning to the ship by using the provided Virkon disinfectant bath.
  4. Bring a reusable waterproof bag to protect your camera and/or phone from the elements. (Avoid single-use plastics at all times.)
  5. Don’t dispose of waste during shore landings. Where waste is unavoidable, bring along a reusable bag and carry the waste back onto the ship to be disposed of properly.
  6. Support local communities in the Arctic: Purchase goods from local artisans during community visits in the Arctic, but don’t purchase important goods like groceries and supplies as stock is limited and deliveries are rare.
  7. Follow the environmental and conservation guidelines established by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) and the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators (AECO), who outline strategies, policies and behaviors to protect the polar regions.
  8. Place a bid during our onboard auctions: proceeds from our onboard auctions support polar research and conservation groups.
  9. Become a Polar Ambassador. Talk to one of our Expeditions Team about becoming a Polar Ambassador.  This program teaches you how to make changes to reduce your carbon footprint every day. It’s also your way of educating your respective communities on the importance of protecting the majestic polar regions.

 

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Quark Expeditions is the leader in polar travels. Quark Expeditions has been taking global travelers on immersive journeys to the Arctic and Antarctica for almost three decades.

Meet the Primates: The Gorillas of Rwanda

By Jennifer Eremeeva 

Jennifer Eremeeva was Alexander+Roberts manager of services in Russia for many years. An accomplished traveler, Jennifer writes about her adventures around the world frequently and recently published Lenin Lives Next Door, a witty depiction of life as an expat in Moscow.

 

It is telling an overwhelming number of travelers report that the steep, arduous climb of 1-4 hours to see the gorillas is a small price to pay for the exhilarating experience of witnessing these remarkable animals at work, play, and in the midst of intimate family interaction. It’s a long day, but an exhilarating one. Once the arduous climb is behind you, and the team of expert guides has located gorillas who have been adapted to humans in proximity, you need only sit quietly and marvel at these remarkable animals.

Rwanda_MtnGorilla-2_WildernessSafaris_CCulbertPhoto Courtesy of Alexander+Roberts

According to the World Wildlife Fund, gorillas share a whopping 98.3% of DNA with humans; just one of the myriad of similarities that make gorillas so eerily familiar to humans. Researchers who have worked for over 40 years with Koko, a domesticated gorilla have been able to teach her over 1000 words in American sign language, in which Koko communicates her grasp of complex concepts such as happiness, remorse, and even the nature of death and dying. In their closely-knit family or “natal” units, gorillas display years-long nurturing of their young, which involves socialization into the broader community.  We also know that they can fashion tools, which enable them to better exist in their native habitats.

Though still considered “critically endangered,” the gorilla population has shown encouraging demographic growth thanks in large part to the dedication of conservationists and the government of Rwanda. Stringent efforts to curb illegal hunting, poaching and the sale of gorilla body parts for trophies, traditional medicine, and charms have seen the population rise from 250 to its current estimate of approximately 1000.

Traditional gorilla “natal units” are led by a dominant older male, immediately recognizable by the silver hair on his back, which turns with age and gives these patriarchs their name of Silverback.

Gorillas and humans are similar not only in our unique fingerprints and facial features but also in the way we conduct intimate relationships and how we progress through our life cycles.

Rwanda-245_BisateLodge_WildernessSafaris_DanaAllenPhoto Courtesy of Alexander+Roberts

Female gorillas mature at approximately 8-10 years, at which point they leave their own natal groups to avoid inbreeding and begin to search for a mate. When she finds a likely mate, the female initiates the mating ritual by pursing her lips and approaching a Silverback while maintaining prolonged eye contact with him.

If all of this sounds familiar, so too will the subsequent gestation period of 8-½ months. A female gorilla can expect to birth a baby once each 4-6 years for a total of 3-4 offspring in a lifespan.

The lengthy period between pregnancies is explained by the importance of parental care for the infants and juvenile gorillas. In extreme infancy, this care is provided by the mother, who feed infants on the hour and maintain close contact throughout the day with their young, including cuddling, grooming them, and wrapping them in her arms during sleep.

This close bonding gradually decreases as the infant enters the juvenile period at 4-5 years. At this point, the role of the father becomes more critical, particularly after the young gorilla is weaned. Up until this time, the father has acted primarily as a protector of the family unit from predators, but as the juvenile detaches from its mother and she enters a new cycle of ovulation, the father begins to play a more important role for the juvenile, helping him socialize into the larger community outside his tightly-knit natal unit.

Rwanda Gorilla trek image002Photo Courtesy of Alexander+Roberts

Since the 1990s, researchers have noted an interesting shift in the demographics of gorilla natal units, which appear to be expanding to larger numbers of up to 66. These expanded units boast multiple mature males as well as the traditional “harem” of females, though a Silverback is still the dominant patriarch. This shift may well be the gorillas’ evolutionary response to the threat of population decline, and the trend shows no sign of reversal.

Your arduous climb up the steep slope to their bamboo forests may well be rewarded by seeing female gorillas nurture their young, the playful antics of juveniles, overseen by a benevolent “babysitting” Silverback, mutual romantic grooming between a female and her mate, or even the mating ritual!  So, put a meet up with gorillas on your travel bucket list!

 

Interested in learning more about Alexander+Roberts? Visit www.alexanderroberts.com or call 800-221-2216, 9am to 9pm, Monday through Friday. 

Alexander + Roberts is proud to partner with Rwanda’s National Park Headquarters and their expert staff of gorillas experts and guides in our signature programs, Rwanda Gorilla Trekking.  Contact one of our knowledgeable reservation agents to learn more about these unforgettable opportunities to meet the primates!

Marking its 72nd year, Alexander+Roberts is an American travel company and a founding member of USTOA. Whether it’s a Small Group Journey with never more than 16 guests, a luxury Private Tour or a Custom Itinerary, Alexander+Roberts’ expert native-born guides can take travelers deeper inside the history, cultural traditions, personal stories and natural wonders of the world’s most fascinating places. Intimate hotels, luxury safari camps, congenial dining with wine, and authentic cultural encounters are among the Small Group and Private Travel highlights you won’t find on other tours.

Wildlife Viewing with Arctic Watch for the Active Traveler

By Daven Hafey, Quark Expeditions

Wildlife guide and documentary producer Daven Hafey has a passion for all things related to wildlife, weather, tides and Indigenous culture. He has guided on more than 40 polar expeditions, in the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Alaska and the Antarctic. 

 

The Arctic. Just speaking the name evokes a wide array of thoughts and emotions, of daydreams, and longing for those who seek wildlife adventures in the tundra and barren lands of the surreal landscape under the midnight sun. It’s this urge to explore the pristine wilderness of the High North that draws visitors to Arctic Watch Wilderness Lodge, an off-the-grid base camp built to withstand the Arctic climate.
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Located on the northern edge of Somerset Island, nearly 800 km north of the Arctic Circle, Arctic Watch is small, family-run, remote land-based lodge that enables visitors to explore the wilds of Canada’s Nunavut Territory.

One of the most popular draws to Arctic Watch Wilderness Lodge is the prospect of witnessing the annual beluga whale migration to Cunningham Inlet on the island’s northern shores each summer. There, in the waters of Cunningham Inlet, the majestic belugas socialize and reconnect with hundreds of their species in the quiet and pristine waters off Peel Sound. Few wilderness experiences rival the vision of mother belugas and their calves playing in the shallows of Cunningham Inlet.

Belugas_CunninghamInlet-Arctic-courtesy-ArcticWatch

 

I’ve encountered so many other wildlife species during my visits to Arctic Watch Lodge. Muskox abound in the tundra and talus slopes of Somerset Island, along with Arctic hare, Arctic fox, and occasionally caribou. The King of the North, the polar bear, is often seen in the region, as the McClintock Channel on the west coast of Somerset Island is home to one of the more stable populations of polar bears in all of the Arctic. Migratory birds also take advantage of the short Arctic summer, congregating en masse to feed, breed and rear their young before returning south for the winter. Arctic terns and eider ducks are plentiful. The chance to observe such wildlife in their natural habitat is the appeal of the Arctic.

Muskox-Arctic-courtesy-DavidMerron

 

The active traveler has multiple wildlife-viewing options while staying at Arctic Watch Wilderness Lodge:

 

By water: kayaks, stand-up paddle boards and rafts

Sea kayaking and stand-up paddle boarding are popular ways to explore Somerset Island. Imagine gliding through the pristine Arctic waters with sea ice on one side of you and dozens of belugas on the other, or propelling yourself forward on a stand-up paddle board in Cunningham Inlet while watching and listening to the belugas as they congregate in the same waters.

Kayaking-CunninghamInlet-courtesy-ArcticWatch

The expert team at Arctic Watch Wilderness Lodge, operated by Richard Weber and Josée Auclair along with their sons Tessum and Nansen Weber, do their best to ensure guests get a fully immersive wilderness experience. That can mean navigating the rivers upstream of Cunningham Inlet to check out the water-filled canyons and waterfalls while on the look-out for musk ox, Arctic fox, and other iconic wildlife.

 

Exploring faster and further on a fat bike or an ATV

In the absence of developed trail systems, fat bikes provide an excellent means of exploring rocky beaches, hillsides, and ridgelines inhabited by myriad Arctic wildlife. Guests can also hop on an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) to explore a distant ridge or plateau land and then explore on foot. Lodges guides are available to drive should a guest prefer not to operate an ATV on their own.

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Let’s Go Fishing

The team at Arctic Watch includes experienced fishing guides who can equip you with gear if you don’t bring your own.  It’s hard to imagine a more pristine freshwater environment than the rivers, streams, and meltwater ponds of the High Arctic. Thawed and free-flowing for brief periods every summer, the cold, clean rivers and streams of the Far North are paradise for fish, especially Arctic char, which sometimes weigh more than ten pounds.

 

Take a leisurely approach to the Arctic wilderness

Visitors who feel the urge to absorb the wonders of the Arctic at a more leisurely, relaxed pace can go on a hiking or photography-themed outing – or they can simply choose to enjoy the Arctic wilderness in solitude. Joining a guided hike means you have the benefit of listening to staff recount endless stories and northern experiences, which provide historical, ecological, or cultural context. What better way to learn about the intricate, resilient, and delicate ecology of the Arctic wilderness.

 

Interested in learning more about Quark Expeditions? Visit www.quarkexpeditions.com.

Quark Expeditions is the leader in polar travels. Quark Expeditions has been taking global travelers on immersive journeys to the Arctic and Antarctica for almost three decades.

An Experience in the Polar Bear Capitol of the World

by an AFAR Ambassador

I arrived to Manitoba, Canada, for my polar bear expedition with Tauck, and within my first thirty minutes at the Inn at the Forks in Winnipeg, I knew that I was not only in another country: I had entered another world.  Words like Inuit, mushing, ptarmigan, grouse, dainty and Inukshuk were mingled into my conversation with a young woman named Dene who welcomed me from Travel Manitoba, and I tried to decipher with context clues what these words actually meant.

Our group hopped a chartered flight the next morning to Churchill, the polar bear capitol of the world.  Churchill is accessible only by plane or train, but plane is definitely the way to go: it’s a forty hour train ride from Winnipeg, due to environment factors and land conditions.  We arrived to the warm Lazy Bear Lodge, our outpost over the next few days as we explored this remote Canadian town and searched for its most famous inhabitants.

The Lazy Bear Lodge

The Lazy Bear Lodge

I felt very far from New York City

I felt very far from New York City

The culture of Churchill is a microcosm of Manitoba, as its year-round inhabitants have had to become resourceful and inventive in order to live here with its harsh weather conditions.

There is an open-car-door policy in this town: everyone is required to leave the doors of their cars unlocked, in the case that a resident is walking around and gets approached by a bear.  Colin, our local guide for the trip, as well as Dale, our Tauck guide and also a Canadian, explained the protocol to us: “If you’re walking around and you see a polar bear, just jump into the closest vehicle and start honking the horn to scare it off– or at least, to notify people close by of the situation.”  This was definitely a different kind of street awareness from what I deal with in New York City.

A majestic polar bear, spotted on our Tauck expedition.

A majestic polar bear, spotted on our Tauck expedition.

In this place, polar bears are equally feared and respected.  All Churchillians, as they fondly call themselves, know that the bears ruled this land way before they ever got here, and every effort is made to keep humans and bears living in harmony with one another.  There is a polar bear alert team that stands watch on the town’s borders in the effort to minimize any bear-to-human contact.  If that contact cannot be diverted and a bear engages in behaviors like coming in to town, attempting to break into homes or if it does anything that could potentially threaten the safety of Churchill’s residents, it is deemed a “bad bear” and put into “bear jail.”  Formally known as the Polar Bear Holding Facility (but called bear jail by all of the locals), this is a holding facility for up to eight “inmates” who are detained and then released out on to the Bay as soon as the ice forms.  The polar bear is the only bear that will actually stalk people and is extremely stealthy; people have learned to adapt, but a great reverence for nature is at the forefront of life in Churchill.

The Polar Bear Holding Facility. Humans cannot enter, as the goal is to keep the bears from becoming desensitized to human interaction.

The Polar Bear Holding Facility. Humans cannot enter, as the goal is to keep the bears from becoming desensitized to human interaction.

The people here have all adjusted to a different way of life: the shipping season is incredibly short, as summer just lasts for a few months.  A ship isn’t insured if it is in these arctic waters past October 31st, so in Churchill, Christmas in July really does exist.  If you have ordered something at any point in the year and are waiting for it to come via ship (as most heavy items do for the sake of cost), it comes in July.  Everyone in the town goes down to the docks and there is a huge celebration– that t.v. or snowmobile you ordered six months ago, has finally arrived.

Life in Churchill at Dave Daley’s Wapusk Adventures, where you can discover the culture of dogsledding and experience it for yourself.

Life in Churchill at Dave Daley’s Wapusk Adventures, where you can discover the culture of dogsledding and experience it for yourself.

Tauck seeks to make every experience incredibly special, with unique and customized glimpses into a place and its culture.  One evening, we went to meet a Maite woman in her seventies named Myrtle, who uses storytelling to conserve her culture.  She has built a museum in Churchill full of personal and familial belongings, a museum that she has gifted to the city with the hopes that it will carry on the the legacy of her life and her people, long after she is gone.

Learning from Myrtle, a native Maite storyteller.

Learning from Myrtle, a native Maite storyteller.

We gather around as Myrtle tells stories of her childhood, of styling her hair with bear grease and of what it was like growing up as a trapper’s daughter.  “Nobody wants a skinny woman,” she says.  “The worst thing about a skinny woman is she wasn’t that cuddly.  The men went for the biggest, hottest woman they could find to keep them warm in the winter.”

She continued on and had us all laughing and wide-eyed about her life here, and how it could be so incredibly different from our own– and even from the lives of people in her same country.  Anything or anyone below Churchill is referred to as the “south” or as “southerners,” and  rightfully so: only true people of the north have been able to adapt and carve out a life here over the past several thousand years.

Dogsledding with Wapusk Adventures.

Dogsledding with Wapusk Adventures.

We returned back to the Lazy Bear Lodge and Cafe, and I ordered a bison steak, mashed potatoes and some steaming hot tomato soup.  I figured I needed to put a little more meat on my bones– to keep me warm, and because skinny women don’t belong in these parts.  With a full belly and a happy heart that evening, I drifted off to sleep.

The delicious food served at the Lazy Bear Cafe.

The delicious food served at the Lazy Bear Cafe.

For highlights from this tour through Manitoba, please click here.