welcome to mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
settled on the western shore of Hudson Bay lies Churchill Manitoba here where
temperatures can dip to 30 below Fahrenheit this tiny outpost has the
distinction of no other place on earth it's the polar bear capital of the world
in search of polar bears Wild Kingdom travelled to Canada's frozen tundra
where we met up with dr. Steve Amstrup of polar bears international dr. Amstrup
has the rare distinction of appearing in two of the original Wild Kingdom
episodes in 1980 he joined Marlin Perkins to help collar and track the
herd of pronghorn and in 1985 he teamed with Jim Fowler on a groundbreaking
project to collar and track polar bears on the frozen Arctic Ocean I sat down
with dr. Amstrup to discuss his experience every Sunday night
did you watch Wild Kingdom every Sunday night every Sunday night if I was
outside when Mutual of Omaha was getting ready to come on my mother would be
hollering at me usually when I was about to come on yeah it was a big influence
on the career choice that I made and the way that I thought the early years of
Wild Kingdom were to a great extent about people going out and working with
animals actually capturing them marking them trying to determine how to make
sure that they were doing okay and I thought oh yeah well so people really do
that for a living my very earliest years eight five six years old I always had a
special affection for bears and I don't know where that came from but I always
would tell people I want to go into the woods and study bears what was it like
working with Marlin Perkins it was pretty cool when you watch the TV show
especially as a young adult when I would watch the episodes it was kind of corny
and Marlin was you know the language was still to get the sense that well this
guy's a TV personality and he's acting but when you meet him in person he was
just as nice and congenial and knowledgeable I mean he's a PhD
zoologist specializing in reptiles and amphibians and he knew so much stuff so
he had us captivated around morning coffee before we went out to do our work
so that part of it was really cool and then he insisted on being out and being
a part and even though he was getting pretty
old at the time that I worked with him in Wyoming he was right out there on the
ground and doing stuff there was one funny part where because of the timing
of what was going on on the ground he had to be on the ground immediately
after the helicopter was in the air so I took his red parka and I was him in the
helicopter for a while so they could have the distance shot and he was on the
ground waiting so that he could be there and helping to wrestle an antelope or
deer or whatever it was so that he could be on the ground and they could go to
the next frame instantly I've watched Wild Kingdom every time it
was on seeing him and Jim and his other associates capturing animals working
with real wildlife biologists in the field that gave me the indication that
this is something people do for a living and something I can do for a living what
was your favorite Wild Kingdom moment while filming with him I mean there were
a number of scenes that they really wanted to capture to kind of show the
totality of what my research was and one of them was they definitely wanted to
catch female with Cubs and we didn't know for sure if we were gonna actually
see a female with Cubs but we did and we saw this female with two new Cubs right
out of the den going across you know there's probably a pretty small chance
that was really gonna happen but I thought it was worth a try we set up
that female bear came right towards us and we were just agog and we couldn't
believe she was gonna come right by us and then she didn't go by us she stopped
right in front of us and nursed her cubs for over an hour
I mean she just laid there and it was as if we weren't there and she had to been
aware we were there but she didn't show it I'm sure it's the most remarkable
thing I saw in my 30 years of doing polar bear research and of course it was
perfect for the show we just never anticipated having this kind of an
opportunity but it was great dinner made for some great footage on the show and I
got some great still photos that I still use in some of my slide talks
what was it like meeting Jim Fowler it was it was pretty cool
Jim was a great guy to work with in the field and strong as a bull
I mean he I don't know he was six foot four six foot five something like that
and part of that was we used to weigh bears on a bar we'd have a two people
standing with a bar in your shoulder and a scale in between and stand up and lift
them and Jim didn't have any problem with that so when you're episode you
were taking Jim to go track down polar bears and you were showing different
types of really rescuer captured techniques do you still use those
techniques today the techniques that we did when Jim Fowler was out in the field
with us are largely the same for the whole 30 years that I was doing research
on polar bears in Alaska we captured bears by darting them from a helicopter
and then weighing them measuring them marking them putting radio collars on
them so that we could follow them to Denning areas or determine the sizes of
their activity areas those things are all pretty much still the same the
electronics are much advanced in our ability to navigate out there as much
advanced in those days we often really didn't know exactly where we were but
now with GPS and things like that we know where we are and where the Bears
are so that was all kind of a developmental thing you know we were
doing developmental science they were out there documenting the first
satellite radio collars that we put out you can actually see the evolution of
different types of techniques that were employed which i think is really more a
huge part of that you're a pioneer really you and him are going in and
trying these new techniques and methods and you got to actually do that with
more than Perkins and Jim Falco these different techniques and caught it on
film it was pretty neat especially for a kid who grew up you know kind of wanting
to be those guys and then suddenly being able to actually work with them that was
pretty special kind of a big deal yeah
you