Located on the west shore of Hudson Bay, about 140 km (87 mi) away from the Manitoba-Nunavut border, the town of Churchill, Canada. It is a small town home to only about 850 people. Interestingly, the place also has more or less the same number of polar bears. That's a 1:1 ratio if you ask me. While the bears live on the frozen bay to hunt seals during winter, they move inland once the ice melts in July. And then they'd return to the shore by the end of November to wait for the bay to freeze once more. Because Churchill is in the middle of the so-called "polar bear highway," the town has earned the nickname the "Polar Bear Capital of the World." The town even has a company that offers polar bear tours.
But how do the people manage to live peacefully with the polar bears? The answer is through the polar bear holding facility, or as it is colloquially known, the "polar bear jail." Like a real jail, the place is used to "imprison" bears reported to approach humans. They're still dangerous animals, after all.
As they "serve time" in the holding facility, the animals are only given water, so they won't associate humans with food. Their "sentence" doesn't take long, however. Most bears only stay in the facility for 30 days or until the bay freezes. Immediately, they are released and free to hunt seals again.
Atlas Obscura tells more of this bear-y interesting story over at their website.
(Image Credit: Marko Dimitrijevic/ Flickr via Atlas Obscura)