Manitoba has rescinded polar bear viewing vehicle permits for a Churchill ecoutourism company owned by a candidate vying to lead the opposition Progressive Conservative Party.
The provincial wildlife branch told Lazy Bear Expeditions owner Wally Daudrich last week that his company is no longer permitted to operate two tundra vehicles on the coastal plains of the Churchill Wildlife Management Area, east of Churchill, where polar bears gather in large numbers each fall before the ice freezes up on Hudson Bay.
The wildlife branch said Lazy Bear’s licence has been rescinded for the 2025 season because of the continuing decline in the number of polar bears on the western side of Hudson Bay.
“This decision is intended to align with Manitoba’s conservation priorities for polar bears and the protection of the sensitive tundra ecosystem,” wildlife branch director Maria Arlt said in a letter to Daudrich on Feb. 27.
“Additionally, concerns about the potential habituation of polar bears to vehicles, which poses safety risks, further underscore the necessity of this limit.”
Arlt said the province is reducing the number of vehicles allowed to traverse the tundra in the Churchill Wildlife Management Area from 20 to 18. That was the number of vehicles permitted to carry tourists to see polar bears prior to 2020, when the provincial government granted two more vehicle allocations to Lazy Bear.
The other 18 tundra vehicles are operated by Frontiers North and Great White Bear, two other Churchill ecotourism companies. The number of vehicles allowed to carry tourists to see bears along the coastal plain was capped at 18 in 1984 and upheld at that number in a 2013 management plan completed for the Churchill Wildlife Management Area.
Since then, Arlt said, the number of polar bears in the Western Hudson Bay subpopulation have declined further and the body condition of the surviving bears has deteriorated, mainly because of increasingly long ice-free seasons on Hudson Bay.
Polar bears only hunt for seals when ice is on the bay.
“Future projections indicate that polar bears in Western Hudson Bay are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change and consequently these bears will be spending longer periods on land, culminating in increased stress levels due to lack of food in the ice-free period,” Arlt said.
Surveys and environmental monitoring of the Western Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulation suggest the number of bears in the region dropped by 50 per cent between 1979 and 2021 and the average weight of these bears has also declined, according to Canadian research published in the journal Science in January.
Daudrich said in an interview the health of the polar bear population in the Churchill area is important to ecoutourism companies.
“Churchill’s biggest, best resource is healthy polar bears,” he said, objecting to the idea his vehicle allocations had to be cancelled to ensure the health of the bears.
“That’s a discussion for Churchill and our tourism industry to have, not to arbitrarily pull permits away. Just my permits, by the way. Nobody else’s.”
Daudrich said he and his family, which also own the hotel Lazy Bear Lodge, spent decades building up their business to earn the right to receive vehicle allocations in 2020.
“We actually did tours prior to that for years as well, but we needed the permits that we have now from a marketing perspective and to make sure that our clients, of course get the best tour,” he said.
Daudrich said thousands of people have booked tours with Lazy Bear for this fall and in 2026. He said he stands to lose tens of millions of dollars due to cancellations.
He accused the NDP government of playing a role in rescinding his vehicle allocations.
“I believe the bureaucracy is being weaponized by Wab Kinew against me,” said Daudrich, claiming he is ahead of Fort Whyte MLA Obby Khan in the PC leadership race.
Voting has yet to begin in that contest, which concludes on April 26.
“I think they see me as an unknown entity,” Daudrich said of the NDP government. “They want to throw me off balance. But I’m in this game, I’m here to stay.”
Natural Resources Minister Ian Bushie dismissed Daudrich’s allegation about political interference.
“Unlike the PCs, we are taking the politics out of this. This is the department doing their due diligence,” Bushie said in a statement, referring to Daudrich’s longstanding membership in the PC party before he received vehicle allocations of his own.
A CBC News request for an interview with the Natural Resources department was declined.
In a statement that was not attributed to any official, the province said said it conducted “extensive engagement” about polar bear vehicle allocations during the fall of 2024 and “determined that polar bear viewing tourism is saturated.”
On Tuesday, John Gunter at Frontiers North and Kyle Walkoski at Great White Bear declined to comment on the cancellation of Lazy Bear’s vehicle allocations.
In 2020, Frontiers North objected to the provincial decision to grant Lazy Bear two vehicle allocations, claiming the province did not consult the other ecotourism companies.
Great White Bear, meanwhile, took the province to court in 2020 in an effort to get Lazy Bear’s vehicle allocations revoked on the basis they were issued in “discriminatory, biased and unfair manner.”
Arlt suggested in her letter the 2020 decision to grant those allocations to Lazy Bear was unfair.
“We are committed to restoring a fair and transparent allocation process for the future,” she said in her letter.
