Have you ever wondered what arctic research is really like? Today I’m talking to not 1, not 2 but 3 real-life scientists who help to protect animals in the arctic. Bundle up and tune in!

Emma’s interviewed THREE amazing scientists: Yifeng Wang, Katie Florko, and Nick Paroshy. These three have been working hard high up in the cold to help Polar Bears, Ringed Seals, and Caribou. Your help has allowed Earth Rangers to fund their research by sending money from plush adoption kits to save these beautiful animals.

But because of climate change, caribou are having a harder time finding food to eat and places to live. Polar bears who rely on sea ice for food, struggle because their habitat keeps melting as temperatures rise. Ringed seals depend on this ice for food and protection from predators, making it hard for them to protect and feed themselves.

Katie Florko has been in charge of studying how to protect ringed seals. Working in Churchill, her job to fly over the arctic to find ringed seals and fit them with special tags that track how they move and act underwater. If we understand where seals go, and what they do, we can learn more about how to protect them and their habitat. Once the data collected, she traveled to Tokyo, Japan, to share her discoveries with scientists from all around the world!

Earth Rangers across Canada adopted over 250 ringed seals to help her with this project. That’s an incredible amount!

Over the summer, Yifeng Wang went to the permafrost peatlands to collect data to predict how the permafrost might respond to climate warming. As the climate warms, shrubs growing in areas that used to be shrub-free making the permafrost thaw, which means that caribou have less access to food and water. In winter she went to Labrador to work with the communities there to organize events to help everyone learn and come up with solutions to together to fight climate change and protect the peatlands together.

She’s been able to do this thanks to the incredible help of 150 Earth Rangers who adopted caribou plushies. You too can help Caribou research by supporting scientist Claudia Haas by adopting a caribou of your own in the Earth Rangers store!

Nick Paroshy traveled up to the Arctic Circle to learn all about how polar bears move across their territory, and how we can help them when this land changes. From the safety of a helicopter, Nick will fly all over the Beaufort Sea to scout polar bears, and tag them to track their movements. To do this, they need to tranquilize the bears, since humans cannot safely approach these majestic predators.

An amazing 478 Earth Rangers helped Nick in saving Polar bears! You contribution has been a huge support!

Want to help out too? Go check out the current animal plush kits in the Earth Rangers shop – all of them are tied to real scientific research and will support these people in saving the animals you adopt! Don’t have any money to buy a plushy? Don’t worry! Wildlife adoptions aren’t the only way you can protect animals! Small actions, like challenges and missions, can go a huge way to helping fight for animals.

This will be our last episode for a while – Emma took the rest of the summer to prepare for her next adventure (a really special one at that!). Don’t worry – we’ll be back soon with a brand-new season and it will definitely be worth the wait.

Did you learn anything from Emma’s meetup with these super-scientists? Were you one of the cool Earth Rangers who had helped support their work? Which animal did you adopt? A comment below!