(AFP) - Trailer dog breeder David Dailey lives at the gates of the Arctic in Canada in a world that is changing a lot, which prompts him to assert, "Earth will punish us for everything we put it through."

In the remote town of Churchill, along Hudson Bay, where the climate is warming three times faster than anywhere else in the world, the ice floes are slowly disappearing.

Like his mulatto ancestors, one of Canada's three indigenous peoples, the 59-year-old lives in harmony with nature, surrounded by his 46 dogs, at the end of the tundra and the beginning of the arctic forest.

Year after year, a continuous delay in snowfall is feared. "My dogs are waiting for winter like all of us. This culture is on the verge of extinction," he says.

Summer and winter, David Daily wanders around this region known for its aurora borealis, where he practices fishing and closely monitors changes in the animal and plant resources.

The man who introduces tourists to Aboriginal activities recounts, "When I was a child I hunted fish, animals and birds and I didn't find many deer, but now they are everywhere. The same goes for the slender-tailed and pine-pricked heather. .."

This saying coincides with the results of scientific studies stating that climate warming endangers arctic species, especially by opening the doors to other animals coming from the south. Here, animals, like plants, migrate north.

And David Daily asserts that humans have "no choice" but to "adapt" like animals.

Adaptation is especially through a different coexistence with one of the symbols of this region, the polar bear.

During the Cold War, the city, which housed a now-abandoned US-Canadian military facility, had to be ready to fend off a possible Soviet attack across the Arctic. Today, the population is afraid of this sniper animal.

A warming climate is shortening the period during which Hudson Bay is frozen, forcing the region's white bears to stay longer than before on land during the summer. This means that the months of coexistence with humans are the longest, which pushes the carnivorous animal to move closer and closer to the city.
Hikers around Churchill should carry a gun and deterrent and not walk alone after dark or when visibility is poor.
Every one of the natives of this region has a story with bears. "I don't remember feeling any danger during the summer when I was young," said Danielle Daly, David's 33-year-old daughter. "It's different now. My kids can't play on the rocks along the beach like I used to."
The young woman recounts the fear she felt when, last July, she saw a bear running past her house, followed by a rotating mechanism belonging to the Manitoba Livestock Conservation Service, a few meters away.
The situation becomes more complicated during the fall, when the bears starve after a month spent on land without eating, and the seals are absent.
During the night of Halloween on October 31, a special action takes place, according to Ian Van Nest, an employee of the Livestock Conservancy.
This device intensifies patrols on the occasion of this holiday, while also using helicopters to monitor bears and allow children to collect candy.
"We may use canisters that emit a strong sound and flash that drives away the bear," Van Nest said.
The city has installed radars capable of spotting bears less than two kilometers from the city's first homes. It is able to be spotted even in fog.
Although their numbers have declined since the 1980s, the number of polar bears around Churchill is estimated to be 800... equal to the town's population.
Not everyone views climate change negatively.
The mayor of Churchill, Michael Spence, of the indigenous Cree people, stresses that "the positive points must always be looked for."
Spence says that the development of tourism and port traffic due to the high temperature "also provides opportunities for economic growth for the local population."
The presence of bears in abundance attracts thousands of tourists annually to this remote area in the province of Manitoba, which is inaccessible to cars.
Melting sea ice allows ships to stay longer in the city's harbour, the only deep water in the Canadian Arctic.
And the mayor aspires to make it a natural outlet in the north of the country for the export of grain grown in the middle and later for the minerals that may be extracted in the Canadian Arctic regions thanks to the melting of ice.
The bulk of Canada's mineral wealth is found in this region, including diamonds, gold, uranium, tungsten, and rare earth minerals.
However, these opportunities are hindered by other repercussions of climate warming, especially the thawing of the land, which leads to a change in the natural landscape, including the railways, which impedes the transportation of raw materials to the port.
In 2017, floods caused by melting snow damaged railway lines, and train transportation was interrupted for more than 18 months. Since then, the port has witnessed slow activity.
Many houses in Churchill are dilapidated or hastily repaired. Some of them are prefabricated houses that do not appear to be much prepared to face the severe cold, with temperatures often dropping below 40 degrees Celsius during the winter.
Poverty is widespread in this city, whose indigenous population constitutes about 60% of its people (Inuit, Cree, Denny, and Khalasion). First Nations (5% of Canadians and 18% of Manitobas) live in communities that often suffer from unemployment, poor housing, and discrimination.
In this city, 64% of children live below the poverty line, which pushes the issue of environmental protection to second place in the hierarchy of concerns for some.
"We, as Indigenous peoples, must lead the process of reconciliation with our mother, Earth," asserts David Daly.
The experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stressed in their report issued in March that indigenous peoples' wide knowledge of nature must be taken into account in the framework of combating climate change... especially since the lands of these peoples contain 80% of the global biodiversity.