In Churchill, a town of some 1,000 people on the western shore of Hudson Bay, it's the Polar Bear Alert Team.

The Polar Bear Hotline's not ringing these days, but the rangers who man the phone here are ready to spring into action when the ice in the bay starts to melt in a few months.

Shaun Bobier, a district supervisor for Manitoba Conservation, is one of six rangers who run the 24-hour-a-day Polar Bear Hotline, fielding calls from homeowners asking them to kindly remove the bear from their garden.

"Basically the function of it is to protect the people and their property in the community of Churchill and the surrounding area as well as to protect the polar bears and prevent undue harassment and killing of them," he told AFP.

Churchill is on the migration route for polar bears looking for the first frozen ice of the year.

"Churchill just happens to be right in their pathway and that's what brings them around," Bobier said. "Once they get close to the community there's the smells and everything associated with every other town -- restaurants and garbage bins -- so those things draw them in."

The busy season for the Polar Bear Alert Team is from late June or July, when the ice in the bay starts to melt, and lasts until it freezes again, usually in November.

"We have live traps set up around the perimeter of town," Bobier said. "That's kind of an intercept thing where if a bear is coming along he gets caught in a trap before reaching the community.

"It saves us from having to chase him around and it also prevents the possible human-bear encounter."

-- 'It's the teenage years of bears, they're curious' --

The rangers use helicopters and vehicles to keep the bears away as well as "cracker shells."

"It's like a large firecracker," Bobier said. "You shoot it out of a 12-gauge shotgun. It explodes in the air and makes a loud bang."

If the bears make it past the traps, helicopters, vehicles and cracker shells, residents can always can always call the Polar Bear Hotline.

"We're on call 24 hours a day and we'll respond to the call and chase the bear away from the area," Bobier said.

"We'll tranquilize them if we have a bear that's continuously coming back to town or is posing some kind of threat or a problem to the community," he said.

Once a bear is caught it's taken to the "polar bear holding compound" known to locals as the "polar bear jail."

"Its function is basically to hold the polar bears, any bears that we capture around the community, until we can safely relocate them back into nature," Bobier said.

The bears are released about 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of town.

"We have a pretty high success rate of them not coming back to the community in the same year," Bobier said. "For the most part once we've released them they don't come back."

Most parents would not be surprised to learn the most troublesome bears are the polar bear equivalent of teenagers.

"Most of the bears we handle are sub-adults, kind of like the teenage years of bears," Bobier said. "They're the curious ones. They've recently been booted off their mum and they're kind of just finding their way around."

Bobier said the program used to handle about 70 to 90 bears a year but that number has fallen since the town closed its garbage dump. "That dropped 60 percent of the bears that we used to handle off the table," he said.

Once the ice starts to form the bears disappear from town overnight.

"It's almost like you turn a light switch off and there's no bears," Bobier said. "As soon as there's ice they want to be out on the ice hunting for seals.

"That's the time of year I like," he said. "The old bear phone doesn't wake you up at 3:00 in the morning anymore. You get a good night's sleep."

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