Episode 2 Arctic Live

It's minus 13, the winds are gusting up to 80 kilometers and hour. There

is a polar bear hiding in the bush just over my shoulder. You could

only be watching one thing - this is Arctic Live.

Welcome to the magnificent Arctic tundra, just outside the Canadian

town of Churchill on the shores of Hudson Bay. We are here at a truly

dynamic time of year. It's the onset of winter, before it really takes

its grip and the Bay freezes over. Now, there is one animal in

particular that is impatient for that to happen. It is of course the

region's polar bears. Throughout the summer they have been scattered out

here in the tundra, now they are gathering, literally, they are all

around us. Waiting for that ice to form, waiting for the moment that

they can hunt for the first time in months. Now, last night you

contacted us throughout the show using the #ArcticLive. Or you

e-mailed us at [email protected]. Now, I have a little thing to sort

out with some of you sceptics out there. You thought we weren't live

because it's daylight. It's a five hour time difference between here

and the UK. It's 3.00pm, just after, sunset at 5.27pm tonight. Hopefully,

we will be in daylight for the whole show. Some of you saided that you

were enjoying the polar bears you would love to see penguins too.

Could we arrange that? Sadly know. We have a brill yanlt engineering

team they could try to do a live link to the Antarctic. It might

stretch them a little bit. We are game to do Antarctic Live, if you

would like that write to the BBC. I can guarantee you Gordon Buchanan

who said that he could deliver you polar bears live tonight. How are

you getting on with that, Goedon? I have to add it wasn't a money back

guarantee. I'm very, very happy that I can say, on behalf of the Ole

Arctic Live team we have a live polar bear. It's been covered by

snow. It's been lying there for so long. Not a huge amount of activity.

What a difference a day makes, 11 days make. I arrived here and there

wasn't a single drop of snow. Not a flake. Everything was brown and

grey. The polar bears stood out incredibly well. For a polar bear

those conditions are warm. When it's warm, polar bears get Lee that

aringic. As the temperature dropped, polar bear activity went up. Not

that you would know that right now. That's why we are out here in the

cold on the tundra, hopefully, later in the programme, we will bring you

a little bit more polar bear activity. Back to Kate. Thank you

very much indeed, Gordon. 20 miles from here is the town of Churchill.

That's where Simon Reeve is. I wonder if he's wearing a hat? Yes,

I've got my hat on, thank you for worrying about me. I was fine

yesterday, I have loads of hair. You don't need to be concerned. I'm here

at the port in Churchill. The huge buildings are part of that. Gordon

and Kate are in that direction, I think, out on the tundra looking for

bears. Fill amming bears. Let's cross our fingers for them during

this hour of live television. Over in that direction is Hudson Bay. I

hope you were listening yesterday when I said Hudson Bay is big, five

times the size of the United Kingdom. It's massive. Around us, in

this region, there are hundreds and hundreds of polar bears waiting for

Hudson Bay to freeze over to head out on the ice and start hunting

seals this winter. Every year, because our climate is changing,

that big freeze is happening a little bit later. I will talk more

about the freeze and the isolator. I will talk about the strategic battle

for the Arctic that is underway. First of all, let's look over here

at the sleepy town of Churchill in the distance. Brady, just here,

guarding us. Hell local, Brady, with his lovely dog. One of the houses

over there is where some of our fantastic camera team are staying.

They were able to film an enormous polar bear right outside their house

the other night. We will show you that footage in a moment. The very

fact that there are polar bears wandering around here, in the town

occasionally, is why this area needs to have a specialist polar bear

police force, would you believe it? Let's find out more. Churchill

unique location has brought it global fame, but there are real

risks from polar bears and humans living side by side. So this is

where it happened? Yeah. The bear was coming and whipped around the

corner. We had been outside for less than, like, two minutes. Three years

ago Erin Green was on her way home from a party when she was stopped in

her tracks. When I saw the bear running towards us I knew right away

that it was going to be me. He kind of made a circle almost to get to

the back of my head. It got its paws on my shoulder. Its jaw was on my

head to tear at my scalp. At that point I thought - it's me and him

and this is how I go. Erin had a very lucky escape. Neighbours came

toll her rescue. Bear attacks here are actually very rare. The last

fatality was in 1983. That's at least in part to the work of a

dedicated force. Right now we're going to patrol Zone 1, which is

Churchill itself and the immediate surrounding area. Brett is the

senior patrol officer with Manitoba Conservation. Known to the locals as

the Polar Bear Cops. Brett and his colleagues run a hot-line. Polar

Bear Alert. Which residents use to call in bear sightings. Here they

are shooting blanks into the air to scare off a bear spotted near the

health centre. GUNFIRE. If a bear is not scared of humans, not

intimidated, those are characteristics we want to

intercept. Is that relationship here between polar bear in conflict? They

make great neighbours, it's whether we make great neighbours with them.

People in Churchill are cautious, especially after dark, but there is

one night a year when kids take back the streets. Trick or treat.

Hallowe'en is huge here, but trick or treating in polar bear season

requires the vigilance of everyone in the town. Including volunteer

firefighter, Brady Highway. It's on our minds here tonight. A lot of

young ones out there, including my own. Kids out there, they deserve to

have a Hallowe'en night as much as any other Canadian town. We try our

best to provide that to them. Churchill proximity to bears has

brought vital tourism and income. The people that live here never lose

respect for their animal neighbours. Now, we don't have Polar Bear Cops

out here in the tundra, what we do have are these magnificent vehicles.

They look like they should be on the moon. They are tundra buggies they

travel across this unpredictable and rough landscape. There is something

special about them. That is their height off the ground. If you look

down there. It's about 12 feet down. That is a good height for them to be

because when the polar bears are more active than they are today,

there is one hunkered down in the bush just there, hasn't really moved

all day. If he was feeling a little bit frisky wanted to investigate,

and he was a big male, he would be 10 feet tall on his behind legs.

It's important we are two feet taller than him. The other thing

about this buggy, it's actually like a little mobile TV studio. Up there

are the antennae that are beaming the pictures live from the tundra

here back to Churchill and then on to the UK. Inside it's a clever

little place. It's somebody's home. We will meet him in a moment there.

A fire, a bed. There is even a flashy loo. Here is the person who

set up this buggy. BJ, he works for Polar bears International. How are

you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you for letting us be in your home. Our

engineers who make sure our pictures get to you. If you watched yesterday

this is Dr Steve, how are you today? Good. You answered great questions

for us yesterday. I will put you to the test to see how you fire up

today. Row Sanaa asked, how many cubs does a polar bear? Usually two.

Could she have one? She could adopt one through Polar bears

International. Fantastic. We will come back to you later in the

programme. Gordon is just, I don't know whether you can see him through

the window. Just testing our cameraman to see how well he is

doing. How are things out there? I for got to give you the basic polar

bear facts. In the lull in proceedings with my live polar bear

I'll sort of start running them off. A male polar bear tips the scales at

800 kilo grams. Nose to tail is about two-and-a-half meters. A

female around two meters long, but half the weight of a big male. The

most fascinating fact of all is that every polar bear, even the biggest,

started off as small as a guinea pig. It could fit in your hands.

Maybe the weight of two packs of butter. Polar bears lives, all life

in the Arctic, is driven by one thing. Earlier in the year Simon

travelled to one of the most beautiful islands in the world to

find out about that one thing, and it's ice.

It's late summer in Greenland. I'm out with the ice patrol. We're on

the look out for rogue icebergs. It's almost entirely covered by a

sheet of ice. This ice patrol operates in the far south. Lars is

the navigator and chief spotter. Looking for icebergs that can be a

hazard for ships sailing in this area. You are basically looking for

icebergs that are potential ship sinkers? Yes. How big does an

iceberg need to be to a problem? It depends on their size. It could be a

problem for the smaller ships passing. All the technology you have

got, we are up in an extraordinary helicopter, but it boils down to

your clipboard and a pencil? Yeah. I do a written report on this. What a

hell of a place to work. The icebergs he is looking for have

broken off from Greenland's vast ice sheet. The ice sheet is 656,000

square miles. It is enormous. If is also incredibly thick. On average,

it's much thicker than a mile. A mile thick. It feels like it has

been here forever and that it will last until the end of time. But

actually it's so fragile, it's so at risk from what we are doing to our

planet. Our world is warming and the Arctic

is heating faster than anywhere else on the planet. Military The

Greenland ice sheet is melting at an astonishing rate. It's thought to

have lost more than a trillion tonnes of ice in the past five

years. Far more than is replaced by snowfall. If it all eventually goes,

in this can century or the next, global sea levels will rise by

around seven meters. I found it profound and sobering sight. In this

ice sheet there is enough water to put tens of millions of people and

their homes under water. It's an extraordinary thing to witness. This

is the power of the Arctic. Scientists have already shown that

rising air temperatures are melting the Greenland ice sheet, but there

could be another powerful force at work that's further accelerating the

process, a warmer ocean. Nobody has really been studying that, until

now. To find out more I head nearly 500 miles north to Kangerlussuaq The

One group of scientists are trying to find out, not just any

scientists, NASA. They have just landed.

The world toss leading space agency also spends a lot of time studying

Earth, monitoring our planet's vital signs. Doctor Josh Willis is the

lead scientist for a landmark Nasa study called OMG, oceans melting

Greenland. This is our home for the next several weeks. Nasa's jet.

Do you still get a thrill? Absolutely, it's an exciting place

to be. They carry home astronauts on this. Goodness me! And now it is

Josh. Nasa is air dropping sophisticated probes into the ocean

to learn how quickly the sea is melting the ice sheet. Each one of

these contained a sensor and an instrument package that can radio

the data back to us. This is our tube. This is where we launch all of

our probes. That is the toilet, which is where we sit when we launch

our probes. I'll sit on the toilet. And this is a latch. We're able to

drop the probe and they get sucked down the tube when you go. Oh, my

goodness! Nasa let you cut a hole in, what is this, a Gulf Stream? A

Gulf Stream three, that's right. And you put a bit of hype in there to

send probes into the ocean. That's right, we will drop 250 probes into

the ocean through this. Why does Greenland matter so much? We don't

expect all of Greenland to melt in the next 100 years, but a big chunk

of it is and we are yet to figure out how big a part of Greenland is

going to melt and how much sea level rise we are in for. Are we already

entering the time of consequences? We are definitely already seen the

consequences of global warming. Sea levels have risen by around 21

centimetres in the last 100 years and they are rising now at a faster

rate than they were then. In fact, around three times faster than the

weight 100 years ago. So the changes are happening and we are

fundamentally changing the climate of the only planet we currently have

and live on. Nasa says Earth is warming at an unprecedented pace.

The agency has no doubt that our climate is changing. Reporting on

14... The evidence gathered on this mission should give a clearer

picture of how much damage that is doing to Greenland's colossal store

of ice. Greenland's a place you can see in shocking close-up. The

results, the consequences of climate change. Here, as much as anywhere on

earth is the front line of our warming world. Look at this! An

iceberg here. Can you see how blue that is? Look! Their's Iglesia! --

glacier! Look at that! Look at that. What a site that is. Greenland is

the Arctic at its most beautiful. But the melting now underway here is

a warning of a future where the Arctic could affect us all. When you

see melting glaciers, is normal, it has always happened, it should be

happening now, but it is the rate at which it's happening now which is

unnatural and worrying. This feels like I am witnessing the

consequences of mankind's actions. And, if we warm our world too much,

the ice sheet is going to melt away. I should really have set in that

film that it's not just in Greenland where the glaciers are melting. It's

across the Arctic. To discuss this, Arctic matters, I'm honoured to be

joined by Professor David Barber. Hello, David. David is one of the

world's leading experts on the Arctic. Thank you for coming. The

world is warming and the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as

anywhere else. What is happening? All the ice is melting, so what is

happening is, as the planet warms up, that warmth makes its way to the

Arctic, it melts the ice, and that has a number of different things

that happen in the system to cause it to warm up even more. How much

are we losing? If you look at the northern hemisphere, the ice

retreats in the summer and grows out in the winter. If you take that

minimum amount that happens in the summer, we've lost about 60% of that

in the last 30 years. 60%?! Yes, and we are on a trajectory that ice will

disappear in the summer between 2030 and 2050. That's the first time that

will have happened in the development of human civilisation on

our planet. My goodness. Our significant for us is that? You are

talking about something a little entry-level I can feel the hairs on

my arm going up. It is important for everybody to understand this. When

the Arctic changes, it affects things on the rest of the planet.

Those changes are already happening. People are starting to feel the

impact of this change in the Arctic as far away as the tropics. People

think that ice is ice, but ice is a platform for life. Also, the sea ice

in the Arctic is quite vital for regulating the climate of the world.

It is like a refrigerator for the planet, is that right? That's right.

Really, the world should be called the oceans, because it is an ocean

planet. The big oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific, they take the heat from

the equator and move it to the poles, then it sinks down to the

bottom and moves back to the equator. What happens in that

context is that we are removing that heat from the centre of the planet,

the equator, and taking it to the poles. At the Arctic warms up, we

are less able to do that, to refrigerate the oceans. What is the

albedo effect? You alluded to it earlier. The albedo effect. The

simplest way to think about it is you have an Arctic Ocean which is

black if there is no sea ice. If there is sea ice, it is white, so

the ice reflects the energy back to space, so that energy can't do

anything in the climate system. If you have a big ocean, all that

energy goes into the surface and warms up the ocean, so you have to

get rid of the heat before you can freeze the ice. That is what you can

see in the background, with the waves on the estuary, trying to get

rid of that. So, the more ice we lose, the more planet will heat up.

Exactly. For now, back to the tundra.

Boring stuff. So I am here with doctor Steve. You witnessing the ice

receding in Alaska was the thing which drove you to persuade the US

government to declare the polar bear a threatened species. If we see

further decline in the ice, what hope for polar bears? One thing we

have going for us is there are still lots of polar bears in the world,

maybe 20,000-20 5000. If we stop the decline in sea ice soon, we will

preserve a large number of them. But can we do that? Lots of scientists

and managers have shown that we have the ability. They have drawn up

papers and plans. These are the steps we need to take. We can do

this. The important thing is to turn that physical possibility into a

political plausibility. I was going to say, do you think there is the

political will? Talk of climate change isn't new. It's been talked

about for three, four decades. We've had many climate change conferences

and yet this march to global warming seems unstoppable at the moment. Do

you really believe that there is the political will to do the things that

the scientists say we must? I am more optimistic now than I've been

for a long time. The recent meetings in Paris, most of the nations of the

world got together, 195 Nations, and agreed that we need to do this for

the preservation of future generations, all of us, the animals

we love and us. They recently ratified, partners in this agreement

have ratified the agreement, and many more are coming online. Over

one half of the CO2 emissions are accounted for in the agreement.

There are still political hurdles, however. Danny, who is ten, is our

next generation coming up. He has asked via the website whether the

damage man has caused is reversible, or perhaps is it stoppable? You seem

to think it is. I am confident that we have the ability, and I think we

have the momentum going to stop the changes in time to save polar bears.

What can we do as individuals? The most important thing people can do

at this point is to encourage their policymakers, political leaders,

mayors, congressmen, members of Parliament, that we need to take

this seriously, if we care about future generations. They need to

lead us now. Thank you, Steve. To remind us how special these bears

are, we have got live pictures of them from the tundra. I will let you

look at those while I tell you that there is another dramatic symptom of

climate change occurring throughout the Arctic, and it is something that

I discovered when I went to visit Alaska.

It is summertime in the American Arctic and the world is green and

full of life. The state of Alaska is the most northerly and by far the

largest in the US. The Arctic Circle passes right through the middle of

it, just to the north of the town of Fairbanks, where today I'm ditching

the warmth to find out what lurks beneath. Seems mad to be putting on

a huge coat. It is going to get a bit cold. Wow!

Jessica is my guide. We are walking into the side of a mountain,

basically, in the permafrost tunnel. There is probably 200 feet of soil

and ice and trees above us. The tunnel was excavated by the US Army

in the 1960s to research the hidden ice that holds much of the Arctic

together. So what is the definition of permafrost? Permafrost is

permanently frozen ground so, as long as that ground has been frozen

for two years, you can label that permafrost. If I touched that, does

it feel frozen? Is it hard? Oh, yes. Scrape away a little bit. Give it a

bang. My goodness! It is cold. It may look like solid earth, but

permafrost is largely made up of ice. It's like a frozen soil

smoothie am a sparkling in the gloom. Can I just have a small

moment of wonder? It is viewed. -- frozen soil smoothie, sparkling.

This is the glue which holds much of the Arctic together, but it is under

threat. We always thought permafrost would stay frozen for ever but, as

our climate warms, we have warmer temperatures coming deeper so, in

zones where we previously had nothing but solid ice under our

feet, now our roads are crumbling, our houses are falling off their

foundations because they were built on ice that has melted. Across the

Arctic, infrastructure built on permafrost is collapsing. Huge

sinkholes have appeared, like this one in Siberia. An Alaska's northern

coast, more small lakes form where permafrost has subsided and, from

above, the entire landscape looks like cases. At the northernmost tip,

the town of Barrow sits on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. -- the entire

landscape looks like a sieve. There has been a roaming community here

for a long time but the future of the town long term is now in doubt.

Harry is offered to show me the scale of the problem. Look at this!

Starting with a look at the ice seller where he once stored his

whale meat. Wow! This seller is 40 feet deep. My goodness! My

grandfather and his crews. They were dipping into frozen ground. Yes. It

is important to store food in these cellars through the summer for later

use. A cellar like this, dug into the permafrost, was once a reliable

place to keep meat frozen, but that is not true now. When I was a young

boy, permafrost melted in the summer to about two and a half, three feet.

Now it goes down 25, 30 feet. Will you use this? Not this cellar, I

have a different ice cellar. It is dangerous now. These walls are

caving in but this is just an indication of a much bigger problem.

Melting permafrost threatens the foundations of this entire coastal

community. When I was a young boy, this bluff used to be ending right

at the water's H. So all of that land is all gone? It eroded away. In

your lifetime? Yes. It's been a big change, even in five to ten years.

There were homes that have been moved, at least 200 feet inland. 200

feet inland, and now they are, what, ten, 20 feet inland? As the ocean

eats away at the weakened cliffs, these houses will need to be moved

still further inland, which is no easy task.

The old housing stock is built on stilts, drilled directly into the

permafrost, transmitting yet more warmth into the once solid ground.

But Andrew, from the local housing authority, is working on a new home

to solve these problems. It's not hard to spot. Wow, what a colour!

Don't you love it It makes you feel warm looking at it It does. How does

this one work? One of the best things about this house there is no

penetration or direct connection to this. This is sitting on insulation.

That's really clever. Any heat that escapes from the house won't go down

into the permafrost? You've got it. In a place where the ground can

become unstable over night, another innovation could save a lot of

trouble. You put it on a sled. What? You are like a mad professor! It is

literally on a sled. It's on a sled. You pick it up, you pull the pads

away. Yeah. You drop it down, you move it where you want to. So if

somebody has a home on the coast that is suffering from coastal

erosion, like so many of the houses in Barrow have, all they need to do

is pull the house back to another spot? Relocate. That's very clever

indeed. Do they all have to come in yellow though? It can come in any

colour you want it to! LAUGHTER. These skiing homes could soon be a

common sight across Barrow. Several are already in use in the village of

Wainwright, just down the coast. As the land softens and is eaten away

by the ocean, being mobile could help these communities to adopt and

survive. But the real tragedy is that now it's underway the loss of

permafrost seems irreversible. Our climate is too warm now to make ice,

ground ice any more. It's what we would call a tipping point, when the

permafrost melts. Once you have gone over that edge, you can't come back.

We would never get it back? Right. Not in our lifetime, not in our kids

or grandkids lifetimes either. It sounds quite apolyp particular? It

can sound that way. This is the frontline of climate change. David

as if it wasn't bad enough that the permafrost is melting and houses are

cracking and roads, tell us about methane? Well, the problem we are

into right now is because of greenhouse gases. People are aware

of that now. This reliance of fossil fuels are putting carbon dioxide in

the air. Another big one is methane. It's tied up in the permafrost you

see around here in the Hudson Bay lowlands and the Arctic and these

low land areas and the ocean, the ocean floor. A natural gas and a

greenhouse gas? A potent greenhouse gas. Efficient of trapping heat in

against the planet. Adding that to the CO2 in the atmosphere makes the

problem worse. OK. Tell us about feedback loops. Don't you switch

off. It's very important. We will explain. What is a feedback loop? We

use it in a scientific literature when we are talking about how a

system works. What you do is you add something and that causes a response

of some kind. That response creates more of that thing, it goes back in

the system which creates more again. The cycle continues and you get a

feedback loop. The more we heat the world, more methane is released into

the permafrost into the atmosphere, heats the world more, melting more

permafrost and releasing the Met Thane? We are at the point where the

feedback loops are becoming popular in our climate system, particularly

in the Arctic because the Arctic has this very subtle transition between

when something is frozen and thawed. People will say, it looks cold where

you are, what is there to worry about? It's warmer than it should

be. The ocean behind us is open. The rivers are open still. Lakes are

starting to freeze. These changes going on in the Arctic are already

here. We are already seeing them. It doesn't just affect the Arctic, it

affects the rest of the planet as well. People are seeing this weird

weather going down in southern latitudes. This problem is already

here. OK. Thank you very much indeed, David.

We are in a time of consequences, I think you are saying. We will go

back to the tundra. We go back to Gordon Thank you, Simon. It's a good

day to talk about other bear behaviour we have seen or bear

behaviour we have seen in recent days I'm joined by Professor Andrew

Rosha. That bear lift his head. You recognised him it could be Van Gogh.

Yes. They come back to the same spots year after year. He is a

mature male. He probably lost that by not paying enough attention when

he was fighting. That would be during the springtime during a

mating event. Which they of polar bears being solitary hunters, this

is the one niem their life cycle, their year, they can interact with

each other. We have footage we got two-days ago, I shot it of two bears

sparring? This is typical behaviour for young males. They are practicing

their fighting skills. They are about the same size. That is

typical. Like kids. They wrestle with somebody of their same age and

size and practicing when it matters. Nothing to fight about at this time

of year, no breeding activity, no food. It's, working on your skills

and maybe, just maybe, you will meet this bear another time you will know

just how good a fighter he is and whether or not it's worth a scrap.

It seems to be a balance of power here. Those two young bears

disappeared when a big fella showed over the horizon. There has been a

scarcity of females with cubs. One of our cameramen filmed a female

with cubs in this area. Fantastic to see. They were lying in the snow. No

problems at all. Not worried about anything. She sensed something and

she had obviously smelt another bear. Her head comes up. She spots

this fella. Huge, big bear. I don't know if at this point she had seen

him, she got higher up. She seemed to be able to sense there was

something not quite right. Then I think she saw him and move out of

there. Got her kids up and started walking. I think it just kicked in,

the fear factor kicked in, she started to run. There is good reason

for that, isn't there? Exactly. Most of the females with cubs are far

inland at this time of year. They come to the coast very sparingly.

The reason is, this is sort of the primary real estate for bears. The

big males are here. It's a dangerous place for her to be. OK. There is

time for a very quick question and quick answer. Kieran asks - how fast

with cup of those polar bears run? A lots faster than you. Number one,

they can get up to 20mph. If you are a big, fat, male, you are not moving

that fast. Usain Bolt, 20mph. Earlier in the year Kate went to

Sweden to find out how some recent changes in the Arctic are affecting

some ancient ways of life. These are the lands of the Sami

people, some of whom still herd reindeer for a living.let Sami

territory stretches right across northern Scandinavia and into

Russia. The march of developments in the Arctic means they are not alone.

Nearly 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle lies the town of Kiruna.

Kiruna is home to the largest underground iron oar mine in the

world. They are mining 80,000 tonnes out of this mine every day. Wow. A

lot from here goes mostly to Europe. We have 90% of the market. 90%? Yes.

We are the biggest supplier in the European Union. That is

extraordinary. The mine is enormous and the resulting scars across the

landscape have dominated this area for generations. It was first found

in the 16th century and we started to mine large scale in the 1920s. My

grandfather, he worked here his whole life as a driller. Iron oar

was exstrablthed from open cast pits blasted into two small mountains. --

extracted. When it ran out in the 1960s they went underground. Above

ground infrastructure to support the mine has expanded, too. Like much of

the Arctic, the extraction. Resources has accelerated rapidly in

northern Sweden, but not everyone has benefitted. I'm heading to a

community north. The people here also make a living from the land,

but in a very different way. Oh, my goodness. LAUGHTER. Just ahead of me

here, there's the most magnificent herd of reindeer, just running

across the snow here. Look at that! That's just magnificent. They are

incredibly agile, perfectly, perfectly evolved for this

landscape. That's the most wonderful sight. The reindeer on these

mountains belong to a Sami community who spend the summer in a small

cluster of cabins on the lakeshore. Hi. I'm Kate. Hi. Lovely to meet

you. Nice to meet you too. What an amazing place? I know. It's

beautiful. Today my guide as offered to show me around. Why come up here

every summer? Is it to have a nice summer holiday? No. It's a working

place. The reindeer have the best pasture, best for the calves and the

mums to get the best milk for their babies. The reindeer are bred for

their meat which is popular in Scandinavia. They can travel over

1,000 miles a year in search of the best grazing. The herds move between

lush upland pasture in the summer and sheltered lowlands in the

winter. For hundreds of years, the Sami have moved with them. But for

this herd, the mine lies directly on their route. When they migrated down

to the winter pasture or up to the summer pasture they went exactly

where the town is right now. Now there is a town there and a very

substantial mine, what have you lost? We have lost pasture land. We

have lost migration land. We have been forced to move our migration

paths several times Is that a problem? It's a problem because the

reindeer has in its mind how it goes. The reindeer have a map.

Right. When you put a city, a mine or a road on that migrating trail,

you kind of mess up the reindeer's way of moving and they get lost.

Roads and railways cut across ancient migration routes. While the

mine has built bridges for the animals, they still stray onto the

tracks. Last year we had 56 reindeer killed by the train. It's kind of a

bloody mess. What have you gained from the mine and the town? Do you

get any income from it? It gives compensation. We have some kind of

agreement nowadays. Reindeer can't eat money and people can't eat

money, you no know. -- you know. We want the land, we don't want the

money, you know. As the community fights its corner, life continues

and this year's calves must be counted and marked.

It's midsummer here and the Arctic sun only dips briefly below

But the drop in temperature is the Sami's chance to tempt

You've got a helicopter that's working almost like a giant sheepdog

and in partnership with the guys on motorbikes and quadbikes

and they're driving this river of reindeer over this incredibly

rough terrain, and it's just the most beautiful sight.

There are only around 20,000 Sami left in Sweden and just a small

So there's a determination to preserve this way of life

which is so integral to Sami culture.

The reindeer have now been funnelled into the corral,

it's the most fantastic sort of co-ordinated community effort.

Each Sami family has its own reindeer, so they round up any

new calves and tag them by marking their ears.

I get the feeling that this is a day of excitement, but mixed

These reindeer, although they're domesticated, although they all

belong to families, live very much as wild animals,

so today is a big reveal for this community.

How many calves have they had over calving season?

All that will then give them some sense of what their income

In the face of continued development of their ancestral lands, the Sami

are battling to hang their traditional herding lifestyle,

hoping that seems like this will remain an intrinsic part of the

future of the Swedish Arctic. Absolutely beautiful part of the

world, that. I'm in an equally beautiful part of the world. In

Sweden, it was the mine disrupting the migratory route of the reindeer.

There, it appears that Churchill is disrupting, if not the migratory

route, the route that the polar bears use to the ice, and we've got

some pretty shocking footage from 1982 of bears foraging on the town

dump. Not a nice thing for anybody to look at. Were they there because

it was directly on their route, or will they rusher or work they pulled

off their route by the smell of rubbish? I think the major influence

is the smell of something they think is good. That presumably isn't

healthy for the bears, not just eating rubbish, but is it a

behaviour that gets passed down generations? It is the mother bears

that teach the young bears the route to the ice. That's right. These

animals live a long time, they remember events in their past and,

if they are good, they pass them on. If they find food or even the smell

of food, it's likely their offspring will be there as well. Churchill has

addressed this problem and rubbish is dealt with in a different way,

but Gordon last week filmed this very skinny looking female polar

bear with her cub desperately looking around the Wii cycling

centre. Is that learned behaviour? Did she possibly learn it from her

mother? -- recycling centre. I would bet that is probably the case.

Churchill has a problem with conflict with polar bears. Is that

unique? Churchill maybe has the lead in addressing this is a problem, but

it is happening all over the Arctic and it will only happen more as we

have less and less sea ice, hungry bears and more humans in the Arctic,

in the places that used to be the sole domain of the polar bear. Thank

you, Steve. Let's go back to a film Simon made in a country making the

most of climate change. I'm travelling through a part

of the Russian Arctic that, just 25 years ago, was off

limits to Westerners. After crossing the border

with Norway by road, I'm heading along the Kola Peninsula

and towards the Arctic There's been a huge military

presence here since the Cold War, when this area was a key frontier

between East and West. We've turned off the main road

and we're heading to a top secret military base,

or at least it used I'm meeting up with military

expert, Mark Protasov. Ah...

This is huge. In the high Arctic we are inside

what's thought to be an abandoned Thank God the warheads

from here were never fired in anger. This is a scary sign

to see, look. Apparently, this place has been

checked out and is now safe, but I don't really think I've ever

been anywhere quite like this. The warheads here probably

supplied the submarine fleet But, with the reduction

of nuclear stockpiles, It's quite astonishing

to be here, really. When I was a lad, this was the enemy

base when the Soviet Union was a super power and so much

of its military might was concentrated and focused

up here in the Arctic. Then, of course, the Soviet Union

collapsed, here it's And, again, the Arctic is becoming

a focus of attention - economically, I head east through miles

of endless Arctic tundra, until suddenly there was a dramatic

change in scenery. This is a full size city

inside the Arctic Circle. With 300,000 people,

it's the biggest city It's also one of Russia's key ports

because the warm currents of the Gulf Stream keep the water

here ice-free all year round. An extraordinary memorial looks West

to mark the Red Army's heroic stand against the Germans

during the Second World War. Now the melting Arctic means

Russians, like Sergei Balmasov, are eyeing a lucrative trade route

to the East. The northern sea route

is along the top of Russia, It enables a ship to travel more

directly from China to Europe, cutting up to a fortnight

of existing routes. It's rapidly becoming a reality

as the sea ice thins and melts. Russia sees new opportunities

in the Arctic. The Russian Arctic won't be ice-free

immediately and as the pack ice melts there will still be

icebergs floating around. So anyone using Arctic shipping

routes will need icebreakers, and the biggest of

those are all Russian. Captain Andre Martinoff

is my guide to the Lenin. I'll follow you, you go first,

you're the captain. Built in the 1950s, this

was the world's first It was so efficient,

it could break ice for a whole day on just a matchbox size

piece of uranium. Did people worry about working

on nuclear ships as opposed The Russians have steadily built up

a huge icebreaker fleet, leaving It's thought Russia now has more

than 40 icebreakers, many of What's it like to be up

here on the bridge when they're Russia is committing vast resources

to conquering the frozen North. More than any other country,

it has the ability to create shipping lanes and exploit

the melting Arctic. People can talk as much

as they like about who owns the Arctic in theory,

but the reality, up here in the frozen North,

is that while the United States has just a couple of working

icebreakers, Russia has dozens, and that makes Russia the real

power in the Arctic. I just wanted to show you this

place. It's rather atmospheric. It's very strange for me to have been in

a bustling city of Murmansk in Russia a couple of months ago, and

now to be here in the Canadian Arctic, in sleepy Churchill. Canada

is an Arctic country, of course, but this, this is Canada's only real

deepwater Arctic Seaport, on a coastline of more than 100,000

miles. It used to bring -- they used to bring grain in here on these

train tracks from the prairies in the south, but they have stopped

that recently and it looks like this place is being mothballed. So many

people around the world are talking about how the Arctic is up for

grabs, how it is strategically important, and you saw in the film

how Russia is committing huge resources to owning the Arctic. I

would suggest other countries are getting left in. That's it from me.

Back to the tundra. Can you believe it? Just as we are

about to go off air, the two polar bears are starting to move around. I

guarantee tomorrow it will be really cold.

Thanks, Gordon. Amazing sites, these bears. I'm going to leave you with

those and tell you that, tomorrow, Simon comes face-to-face with

monsters of the deep, Gordon discovers how troublesome bears get

evicted from town, and I go to a community of extraordinary artists.

Tom Harris, is six-year-old, said, what is ice? He said, frozen water.

No, dad, it's a platform for life. Good night.

ROLLER-COASTER NOISE, PEOPLE SCREAMING

ROLLER-COASTER NOISE, PEOPLE SCREAMING

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