At this point, with the Internet being as widespread and connected as it is, videos go viral in days. Once it's in the veins of the internet, it spreads near and far, which is why I'm sure you've seen this video:
"OMG IT'S SO CUTE THEY'RE FREI--- Wait, is that a chain?"
Yeah, strange, right? If you've only seen gifs of this video, you might not even notice that there is a chain because they probably only include the bear "petting" the dog. It might be possible to overlook this, too, because the animals don't seem hostile towards each other, right? It would be easy to let this viral video pass like the rest if it weren't for the fact that the dog in the above video was mauled a day later.
I looked up some information on this video and it turns out that it was taken on a piece of land in Churchill, Manitoba, in Canada, an area known for its polar bear population. It's a property owned by a man named Brian Ladoon, who keeps over a hundred of these endangered Canadian Inuit dogs chained up and feeds them by simply tossing excessive amounts of meat near them. In his documentary, The Last Dogs of Winter he frames himself as a benevolent guardian of this dying-out breed. In the trailer, the polar bears native to the area are seen as simply laying around at some points and, at others, being aggressive or being chased after by dogs eating the food that Ladoon so graciously tossed at them while driving by on a truck. Then if they get too close to the dogs, he gets out a gun and tries to scare them away.
Then how did the dog die? As their protector, why didn't he do more?
Simply put, his whole private territory is devoted to exploiting both the endangered nature of the dogs and the mysterious, natural wonder of the polar bears by getting them to interact and having tourists pay to get a tour of his property and/or buy pictures of the bears and dogs being "friends". The system works like this: he throws a lot of meat at the dogs --> the polar bears smell the meat --> they go to the area where the dogs are fed --> the dogs and bears interact because the dogs are tied to the area against their will and forced to be where the free meat is --> the dogs get defensive (whether it be of their food or their space) --> either the dog gets killed or the polar bear gets tranquilized and brought to the city's bear jail at the cost of the city.
By making it almost guaranteed that the bears and the dogs will interact, he is making sure that either the dogs will die a brutal death or the polar bears, who have already been devastated by climate change and the destruction of their habitat, will be attacked and relocated by humans.
Even further, the service of relocating the bears was only put into place for the off chance that a bear wanders into someone's home if they go looking for food in the territories of people. It was designed for accidental meetings. This wasn't supposed to happen on a regular basis because the people of Churchill know not to feed the bears. A bear dependent on humans will seek out humans. That is why Ladoon's practice of "feeding the dogs" is so ridiculous -- because he is giving the dogs meat in an area populated by polar bears and showing those bears that all they need to do for food is to find humans. No need to hunt. Just find where the man in the truck throws out his food and kill any dog that gets in your way. And if there are no steaks, the dogs probably taste the same.
The city of Churchill hasn't dealt with the situation and it has been going on since at the very least, 2008, where Ladoon's business was written about here. He claims that he's making the money to preserve the the breed of dog, but he's accomplished nothing beyond endangering the lives of the dogs he claims to protect, the bears he claims to not feed and the people that live in the area. This video is not cute, this man is not helping anyone but himself and tourists keep lining up to see the cute, cuddly animals cross the border of wild and domestic spheres.
But what do they care about a dog left on a chain to bait a wild animal? What do they care about a generation of polar bears becoming dangerously dependent on the hand of humans to survive their already falling numbers? What do they care about the lives of these animals as long as they get their cute picture to show all of their friends?
What's the life of an animal compared to a tourist's paper?
