Google Street View will be traveling to Churchill, Man. to capture footage of polar bears in celebration of International Polar Bear Day.
Starting Thursday, Google Maps will be recording videos and images of the tundra with the goal of showcasing the area's environment and the importance of keeping it safe, according to Fox News.
Google Maps is working with the conservation group Polar Bears International on the project, CBC News reported. Krista Wright, executive director of PBI, said the goal of the project is to connect people to the polar bears and provide understanding as to how climate change is affecting the Arctic and the impact it is having on bears and other species that depend on sea ice.
"I think the whole thing is going to be really exciting," Wright said. "You have the opportunity to see polar bears in natural habitat. There's imagery of sparring bears- this behavior that we see with male bears where they stand up on their hind legs and kind of play fight. There's an image of a mom nursing a cub."
Leah Knickerbocker, assistant director of PBI, talked about the dangers of the rising global temperatures in a video posted on YouTube, according to CTV News. Knickerbocker said the global temperature increase is causing a loss of sea ice in the tundra, and a loss of sea ice threatens the bears with less access to food and available denning areas.
"Polar bears rely on sea ice for their survival. They use it to access their main food source and in cases they use it to den," Knickerbocker said. "At Polar Bears International our mission is to save the polar bear by saving its sea ice habitat."
PBI will be using the Google images for both education and scientific research, Fox News reported. The conservation group plans to teach kids about polar bears and is working on a scavenger hunt with the use of the Street View maps. For research, PBI members were taught by Google how to use the trekker camera, which PBI plans to use to record changes in the polar bears' habitat over time.
"You get a sense of how these animals interact with one another and you also have the opportunity to see their size and power," Wright said, according to CTV News. "This kind of information is absolutely critical if we are to understand and communicate the impact of climate change on this sensitive ecosystem."
