i had a broken jaw
i had a collapsed lung i had cracked
vertebra in my neck
broken neck but it didn't it didn't get
into the spinal column that this hand
was just kind of crunched so he broke
some of these bones and he damaged the
nerves
and essentially as i understand it
paralyzed one of my vocal cords
his bottom jaw kind of dug in here
and his top one was over in here and he
kind of had me like that
and i can remember
looking out i could see his belly and
leg and everything
he didn't take his claws to me which is
good um so i think all the injuries i
got with bites he was just trying to get
me out of that tent with his mouth
probably trying to
hold the tent down with his hands i
don't know
all the remember
on july 24th 2013 matt dyer was attacked
and nearly killed by a polar bear while
on a camping trip with the sierra club
in the torngat mountains the touring
gats are in the labrador peninsula on
the northern edge of newfoundland about
500 miles south of the arctic circle
in recent decades temperatures in the
arctic have been rising at unprecedented
rates and the ice where polar bears live
and hunt seals is disappearing
in turn hungry polar bears are being
forced onto land where they seek
alternative food sources sometimes even
attacking humans in an effort to survive
in towns like arvyat canada armed bear
monitors patrol the streets scaring away
the ever-increasing number of polar
bears that arrive
in churchill canada so many polar bears
parade through downtown that they've
built a special jail to hold them all
the earth and the conflict between polar
bears and humans is heating up
a year after his attack matt wanted to
return to the torngat mountains to get
closure after his near-death experience
and to revisit the bears that nearly
killed him
we went along for the journey to
investigate the connection between
climate change and polar bear attacks
how are you
name's matthew dyer i'm a
staff attorney the pine tree legal
assistance in lewiston maine and we
represent low-income people in civil
legal disputes i also help people with
public benefits issues disability
overpayments it's what they used to call
poverty law i've been here 15 years
it's a good long time
you know i got so much polar bear swag
when i got back and people are like well
i was like in this body or anything like
that no
not at all the polar bear would
right on the desk but i mean
everyone's different everyone has
different
ways they react to trauma and stuff like
that
i don't get it that way i guess
my last trip there got cut off so short
there were more things i wanted to see
more time i wanted to spend there try to
absorb
i got to be quite honest after this trip
this is kind of the closure for me i've
never been through a trauma like that
before and i just think it's one way to
work through it in my own mind i may be
wrong
there's a lot worse ways you could go
i mean really if you gotta we all gotta
take that journey alone sometime and
that one way to you know getting ripped
up by your bears
in many ways better than being a nurse
at home for 15 years lost your mind
yourself
you know
i tried to look at it that way
positive side
oh
matt is the most resilient guy i have
ever met
um he is you know he
he really has a sense of of humor about
it he was attacked by a polar bear was
almost killed and is able to talk about
this
is willing to go back yes i think you
were crazy if you did the same thing
that we did
without figuring out more carefully
what what what
happened well rich is the one that
always comes up with these interesting
places to go and we like to go places
that
people have not gone before the wildlife
the fjords it just seemed like a really
interesting place to go and what i was
looking into was okay we've got a
destination how do we get there and i
found the company called rapid lake
lodge and they offered flying us into
the park we did tons of research around
what the right protocols are in polar
bear country and some people recommend
bear guards some don't we talked to our
outfitter and he had sent a number of
people out there before with with those
protections we talked to parks canada
about our trip and what we should do we
told them what protections we had we
were carrying flare guns
the fence bear bangers and bear spray
they thought that was fine and also the
other information we had from the park
was that
among the pieces of equipment that you
could use for bear deterrent the electro
fence wasn't one of them and so we
figured we had all of those plus the
electric fence so sure we felt safe and
and we believed that the fence was was
adequate we had no reason to believe we
were going to be attacked in the middle
of the night and in fact we had nev
nobody had ever heard of that before so
we had no reason to think that that
would happen
we're here at base camp it's the entry
point to the torn gut mountains and
we're going to get a crash course right
now on how to stay safe around polar
bears it's very likely we're going to
see a lot of them this trip
you know we figured we'd be okay with
that fence
i mean i've never came from a bear
country i just
didn't know but once i saw that fence
we're
and we were
he can get through this building if it
wants to that's the problem
the bear puts his mind to it he'll do
what he wants
unless you're going to make a solid
steel wall and then it takes away from
the effect of where you are
you know now you're in a compound or a
prison
we've always had that concern about what
do we do with people that aren't with us
how are we liable are we responsible
base camp is here
so
when i hear that someone's camping in
the park i don't get too excited but
i figure anyone that wants to camp
inside in the interior like that is
probably pretty experienced
that's not always the case but you
always try to hope so
then this is a mandatory video that you
have to watch so if you need a bathroom
break i suggest you take it now
it's a
it's a it's not a very long video so
you okay
okay
what should you do if a polar bear
approaches
your best response is always to stop
stay as calm as possible and quickly
assess the situation
from the 1960s to the 2000s there were
about 7 to 12 polar bear attacks per
decade but in the past five years there
have already been at least 14 attacks
and it's predicted that there will be 35
by the end of this decade five times
more than in previous decades
sometimes the bear may make an
aggressive lunge at you
if it does
stand your ground
this may be difficult
facing an aggressive bear will be
terrifying
if it persists or attacks
respond as you would for a predatory
attack
fight for your life and shoot to kill
most visitors most groups here
go to extraordinary lengths to make sure
that they don't put themselves in a
situation
which provides a bear with that kind of
opportunity
it occurred in an area where
we would have and did highly recommend
the group not to be traveling in or not
to be camping in
because here
bears are typically found
along the coast
close to the water
you wouldn't have seen
anybody any bear guard agreeing to camp
there our our folks here would go a
minimum of 10 kilometers inland and even
then you need to be careful very careful
but
when we say stay away from the coast
we mean you know 10 kilometers inland
right where they camped that is polar
bear highway it's very dangerous we see
polar bears there all the time that's
what they told you guys when you were up
there
they didn't even tell us that when we
were there when they picked us up in the
time that we stayed at base camp that
was never mentioned you know we had told
parks canada where we were going to
to land i mean we said we were going to
go to that beach why wouldn't someone
have told us that i mean because that's
a place that gets advertised as a trip i
mean
we didn't come up with this idea on our
own so then just to be clear why was
matt's group allowed to camp there well
i think because matt's group
came along before
we fully understood the potential
risks that were associated with that
area
we can give them as much good advice as
we think is good advice and and people
still want to go out there and
experience the land and experience
travel on the land and
sometimes they take chances sometimes
they win and sometimes they lose we were
adequately prepared to
what i think anyone's knowledge of the
risk was at that point
for backpacking trips in polar bear
country
i'm not aware of a lot of
incidents if you go back 10 years of
polar bears attacking humans
but apparently the incidence is
rising so maybe the rules for being in
polar bear country have to change
how has climate change affected this
area
one of the biggest things that you're
seeing here is longer summers what we're
in right now this is an area that sea
ice typically sawed during the summer
but uh that period is getting longer and
longer now as opposed to back in the
late 70s we're looking at 50 days longer
of no ice in this area you come back
here in a couple months and this area is
going to be totally iced in
a pretty drastic difference from what
you see right now where it's a beautiful
open water
since 1979 about 695 000 square miles of
arctic sea ice has been lost an area
about the size of california nevada
oregon washington arizona utah and most
of idaho combined
oh look there's two bears swimming right
there these look like little guys they
are yeah they're right next to each
other and so what does that mean for
polar bears having less sea ice each
year
so the way that polar bears have evolved
that makes them a specifically a polar
bear is they're marine mammals they live
and they hunt out on the ocean out on
the sea ice so they spend their winters
out there
basically waiting for their favorite
prey which is seals
you know and they wait out on the ice
for the seals to
come through and breathe and they pounce
you grab the seal by its head
you crush its skull pull it up on the
ice
and they have a great meal but because
they've evolved so specifically to hunt
like that when there is no ice
it's like you've taken their weapon away
they have no way to hunt and it turns
out that that's a problem for them
after our crash course at base camp we
boarded the ss robert bradford whose
previous passengers included some of
matt's sierra club campers after they
were rescued
it's about a 10-hour boat ride to knock
fjord and the campsite where matt
was attacked
it's super freezing out here my hands
are all red
uh and that's a massive iceberg behind
me it's probably about seven stories
tall
taller than most the buildings in my new
york neighborhood
our producer is pretty seasick over
there it looks like he's puking
overboard
these waves are enormous they're just
swaying the boat side to side i've been
inhaling that dry salted cod so uh i've
been vomiting overboard most of the trip
too
yesterday i didn't even believe that we
were in arctic tundra
it was like 75 80 degrees and now that
we're getting a little bit further out
toward the fjord it's freezing cold
lassie okay
okay
he's giving me the thumbs up
matt when you're talking about
how you're feeling now going back to
this place
your eyes are getting a little watery
well sure
why wouldn't they you know
you go you go to a place you almost die
it's probably like guys and i don't want
to minimize other people's but
maybe it's like guys going back where
they had a battle or something glorious
soldiers maybe it's like that
anyone who's been through something like
that would know i think um
the people if i was with
if they was here with me they'd know
you think they
coming up to rescue someone
hope not
well unless they need rescue
they dropped us off and
we we got to shore at that point we
looked around for a campsite and the
place we ended up camping was a kind of
a sand bar up above the water where it
was clear people camped before they said
not to camp right next to the water
because that was a of concern
the bears you know could come out of the
water so we got up as far as we could um
from the water the highest shelf up
there
we saw
the first bear the next morning the
mother and cub i think it was cacao
yelled out hey there's a bear out here
i think somebody might have said sure so
i said again
we got to watch her in her cub for a
long time and then we watched her dive
into the water and swim off and it was
just a pretty magnificent experience
my recollection is that we then
went out for a hike
and we were just getting ready to cross
the stream to get back to camp i was
done first taking my boots out and
walking across halfway across when
everybody else says hey wait wait wait
uh come back hey kyle so i turn around
and i look and there's a polar bear and
this was a large male bear
and
after staring at us for a while the bear
started to approach us
so we did our normal grizzly bear
bunch up together make yourself large by
putting your poles up in the air and
your arms out this bear wasn't stopping
this bear gave no indication
that he had any fear of us
or concern about coming closer
maria when do you think it was here
might have been um early this morning
hey matt do you want to check out the
fox over here
oh yeah oh geez
what kind of bones do you think these
are steel
it's seal head
it's pretty cool
the brain's like delicious oh delicious
kids fight for it oh really yeah
i fight for it
it's big so no rush
we've got to keep on
where we are in the look around
they stay close together yeah it's a
beer country
there's a barbie spot
beer person
so i'll keep an eye out for the beers
even you
oh you got
the polar bear went through here yeah
it's fresh
how fresh
if i forgot my opinion
it's possible the bushes that are like
20 feet from us
i've never seen him like this before
what do you mean
he's really
alert
since you've been
ashore and even before we came here he
told me so much about this spot
this place
you said you've never seen your own
brother like this no
he's more nervous than usual he's not
nervous he's just alert yeah he's very
alert
and at that point rich said i'm gonna go
ahead and fire the flare and i said yeah
i think that's a good idea i said okay
that's enough
and he took out the flare gun loaded it
shot it so i shot at the bear below at
his feet the bear ran off and went off
into the distance and sat down in a
little ledge
about a
quarter mile from camp
we headed back to camp
and the bear just laid down on this
ledge and stayed there
all night
that was very scary
oh this is so beautiful
so we're just watching everything
watching the the bear
but matt
was standing outside and
he had his poles and he set his poles
vertically onto the ground and he just
stood there
i don't know how long when it was in the
rainy of watching the bear watching the
bear watching the bear standing still
kind of like uh
like he was the century for
for us
in that bay the one that sat and watched
us that night sitting up on that
kind of over here on that
rocks looking down so that gives you
some idea how far away he was from us
but you could still see him
i think we got a bear over there where
do you see it
tell them right straight ahead hey hey
maria we got a bail maria is this a bear
over here we got a bear
matt spotted one
not too far from the bank where you were
attacked no not too far at all i bet he
smells us
because the wind's going this way yeah
can you see hold on don't be too close
to this okay
oh yeah definitely a polar bear
whoa it's a big guy
oh he's putting his nose up oh yeah he
smells us the same as my territory i'm
not walking away
oh
we've been here for less than 10 minutes
hiking and we already spotted a polar
bear right over there it's actually not
too far from where
matt camped out last year and the bear
was hanging out we could see it lifting
its nose the wind is blowing this way so
we knew that it could smell us so the
bear guards are telling us that we have
to head back now
by the end of this century climate
models suggest we could be seeing
temperatures that we haven't seen for
about three and a half million years
and three and a half million years ago
it was a very different world and i'm
not sure it's a world that we want to
try and live in
so we're in the san francisco zoo here
at their uh polar bear exhibit and and
this is oolu yeah she kind of looks more
like a grizzly bear right now
girl
you
how has climate change affected polar
bears
we've seen a lot of different effects
from a warming climate and the loss of
sea ice we've seen
unusual distribution and movements
we've seen unusual feeding patterns more
cannibalism events
we've seen a declining stature that is
bears are not as big as they used to be
and not growing as fast and one of the
most important things is declining
survival rates
and when people who work on polar bears
say that survival rates are declining
what they're really saying is that more
bears are starving to death good girl
and so how does that
sort of the increased rates of
starvation how does that affect polar
bear human interactions
that's a really good question we have
more and more bears that are hungry that
are spending more and more time on land
people live on land polar bears are
predators they're big animals and the
things that they normally eat are the
size of you and me if they're really
hungry they're not just going to lay
down and die the other side of it is
that if you're a traditional hunter
living on the land and suddenly you're
seeing bears where you didn't see bears
before you might be inclined to think oh
there's more bears seeing more animals
often isn't an indication that there are
more animals it's an indication that
there's a problem
see that little bird oh yeah
how much must be um pizza bird
looks very tasty
oh yeah
yeah
small sticks on top yep
you know you've lived in this general
area for
your whole life have you seen climate
change
affect this area
yeah
we see a lot of chains just a lot of
green
a lot of green grass and wells are going
really up higher than normal
i see more beers now
than i did
and some of them don't look very healthy
and some are hungry they're not getting
steel just as they used to because of
the lack of ice
did you have to carry guns for
protection
why do you have to carry a gun
now protection
just feels like everywhere you go just
polar bear
where there seem to be more
interest than they did before
is it scarier to stay out here now than
it would have been 40 years ago
yeah very much so
it's not the same
and it has to be really scary
where did the bear come from
i need to come across this way my tent
is over here
i always think of it as around 2 15 or 2
30. i woke up to kind of i was in a
dream it was sort of like and we hear i
heard matt screaming help me help me
in
in a very frightened tone so i sat up
very quickly
and looked out and there was the bear
over matt's tent somebody i think i
heard marta maybe say
uh he got mad we hear the scream and
everybody's screaming and
i jump out of my tent grabbing the gun
with me
and i look out and matt's being dragged
by the bear where did he drag you off
that way i don't know how fire he got me
that passed them i mean at that point
the bear had stopped about 75 feet away
standing there with matt and rich um
fire the flare gun
as he did before the bear dropped matt
ran away about
maybe 50 yards
um stopped and turned around and started
going back toward matt and that's when
it became really obvious that this bear
was you know it was stalking us and it
wasn't going to give up rich quickly
lows the gun and fires it again and then
the bear just takes off in the direction
where the big male bear had sat on the
promontory a couple of nights before
rick and i started running out to get
matt we pulled him back we realized he
was alive
pretty dazed and pretty bloody so rick
who is a physician
took a quick look at him assessed his
condition and said we've got to get him
back into the campsite so we pulled matt
back in to camp
making sure there was no bear around and
in the meantime we're all kind of uh
well
we're concerned about
the polar bear
we only had five shells left
and it was dark and so if this bear
wanted to be really persistent
um we were gonna be in
in in real trouble and i'm gonna i'm
gonna say
but i may be wrong
they took me
when i got hurt they dragged me
and then rick stayed with matt inside
this sort of tent enclosure that we
created with the cook tent rick just
immediately kicked into the doctor mode
and took over the care of of
of matt and then i immediately got the
satellite photo out and started trying
to get a hold of the parks canada people
we're calling for help and it took about
five hours i think to get the helicopter
there
that's where the helicopter landed see
those two oh yeah impressions yeah
i don't know what kind of a mac he was
still conscious and talking i gave him
some painkillers he wanted to keep
wanting to stand up he kept wanting to
he said he just didn't feel like
sitting down or laying down his back was
sore i said that's not bad for someone
who just got attacked by a polar bear at
least you're around to feel it he
laughed a little and i sponged off most
of the blood off his head and out of his
hair and off his back and
then i went to the throat one
and uh
when i took the bandage off the
first thing i noticed was the smell
he had probably swallowed or inhaled
i would suggest at least half a liter of
blood
and it was going rancid in his lungs and
once you smell it it's
it smells like death
the evacuation of that was a wonder you
know from the time that
that helicopter picked him up to the
time he was in surgery it was astounding
um
sorry
it was just um
it was just amazing to see him make it
through that
there was a fella down there on that
beach
six of his friends sleep at night near
the full moon july over the top of his
tent
came two
bare legs the four legs down they came
down they came and ripped him out of his
tent
took him away
his head in the mouth of the band
it was quite
certain he'd be killed but he wasn't
his friends saved him brought him back
put a tent around him kept him warm got
help
people helped him took him
he woke up
in the hospital montreal
see his wife's face
that's it that's the story
i think that's all i want to do
you know this isn't just about polar
bears ultimately unabated warming will
affect every ecosystem every species
that we're concerned about including us
it happens that polar bears are at the
thin edge of the wedge they're already
being affected because there's such a
direct relationship between their
habitat the sea ice
and global temperature
i like to say that that polar bears are
a harbinger of things to come to all of
us
if we don't change our ways
oh everything's changed about polar
bears for me
polar bears have become such an icon for
global warming but but they're all cute
and they're all adorable or they are
furry and that's not who they are they
are the top of the food chain they are
predators as we destroy the ice as we
destroy their habitat we are destroying
this unbelievably magnificent animal
but their cuteness has changed for me i
think for all of us
how do you feel about eli saying that he
thinks that the bear that attacked you
is the one that we saw in the willows
over there
well that'd be good to see that bear
again that i know was
all right i know i had feelings
i don't know if it goes both ways he'd
probably say i'd still like seeing this
to die
i'd still like to invite you to dinner
so there's a huge polar bear that's just
right over there right behind me um we
just came over this mountain and it
actually started running right toward us
it was actually pretty scary um and eli
our bear guard tells us that this is a
huge polar bear says probably has a
thousand pounds on me um
and he got tired so he was a little out
of breath and stopped right in front of
us it was pretty cool
he smells us