Drew Hamilton: A Passion for Polar Bears
Drew Hamilton is a nature and wildlife photographer based in Churchill, Manitoba, “the polar bear capital of the world.” No surprise, then, that he specializes in polar bear and other wildlife photography, along with photographing the Aurora Borealis. This year, Hamilton will receive the NANPA Fellow award at the NANPA Summit May 15-17, 2025 in Tucson, Arizona.
Churchill is right on the shore of Hudson’s Bay. It is also right on front line of climate change. At Churchill, three ecosystems come together: the Hudson Bay marine ecosystem, tundra, and boreal forest. That combination of ecosystems results in “an amazing abundance and variety of wildlife all in one spot.” There are only fifty miles of roads in the area, but there is also a network of old military trails he can go explore. “On my morning drive I saw two polar bears and a wolverine,” he said. “I can’t think of too many places where you can do that regularly.” But there are looming threats to these ecosystems, in Churchill and around the world.
Getting started
Hamilton didn’t start out focused on wildlife or conservation photography. He was introduced to a darkroom as a child at the small-town newspaper in Iowa that his parents owned. There he’d experiment with leftover scraps of film and paper, creating collages and other constructions out of the bits and pieces. Later, Hamilton’s mom gave him her old Canon AE-1 and 50 mm lens.
His interest in wildlife started with a job in Alaska. In 1999, he was working at a lodge at Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, a place known for its abundance of bears. He already had basic photographic skills. The rest is history. He started photographing the bears and helping lodge guests with their photography. Back then it was film but would soon transition to digital. “The last 25 years have been a fascinating time to be involved in wildlife photography ,” he said.
No Pebble Mine!
Hamilton played an important role in the No Pebble Mine campaign, for which he received the 2019 Daniel Housberg Wilderness Image Award. He was “a spoke in the leadership cog, he said. “There were a lot of people working hard for decades before I ever jumped in. My involvement was organizing the bear front in a battle that had many fronts.”
“I wasn’t looking for a fight,” he continued, “but I was in the brown bear watching business.” He had worked at Lake Clark and Katmai National Parks and Preserves , then worked for six years as assistant manager at McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge, all in Alaska. When the Pebble Mine proposal was resurrected, he knew what a horrible impact copper mining would have on bears and other wildlife. The proposal included a thirty-seven-mile road through this remote area and icebreaking ferries running across nearby Lake Iliamna. The plan also called for an industrial port and a power plant just 400 yards outside McNeil. For Hamilton, that was an “imminent threat!”
The Pebble Mine proposal came before the start of the COVID pandemic. In early 2020, Hamilton was scheduled to fly to Washington, DC, to talk to U.S. Senators about how bad the mine would be for wildlife. The meetings were canceled, as everything began to shut down. He had to move his part of the campaign to digital tools and was able to switch to Zoom townhall meetings. “It was empowering to harness that connectivity to people all over the world,” he said. The No Pebble Mine campaign was remarkably successful, gathering comments and support from all over the world. The mine proposal was defeated.
Campaigning during a lockdown presented many challenges, not the least of which was that neither decision makers nor the general public could go see the lands and wildlife in question. However, “photographic images are able to transport people to places they might never have been to. Photos are able to make these places that were kind of theoretical at that point, into real places. We could share stories that would take people to the mine site or the places where bears fish for salmon over on the north side of Katmai, places that were under direct threat. People were able to imagine the catastrophe that was about to unfold.”
Especially after COVID, “the photography and videography aspects of conservation work have gotten more and more important because you can reach so many more people so much faster in a digital environment,” he said. “The images make the message so much more powerful. The images and technologies like Zoom enable people who previously might not have had the resources to fight their own environmental campaign to start one. Suddenly it’s all right at your fingertips. You can start putting these messages and images out to the world. And, if it strikes the right cord, and if you do it right, you can gather a committed grassroots army very quickly.”
“Trashy” photography
“Lately, my passion has been kind of trashy,” Hamilton said with a laugh. “We have a trash problem here in Churchill. Over the years, Churchill has gone to great lengths to keep bears and trash apart because that is important for keeping both bears and people safe when you’re coexisting. We had an inside dump that had bears couldn’t get into but it burned last spring.” Now, a town of about 800 people has to deal with the trash from 25,000 tourists and doesn’t have the resources or infrastructure to deal with it as it would like.
“I’ve been trying to go out and document wildlife taking advantage of anthropogenic food sources,” he said. “I was just out photographing an arctic fox in a dumpster. I’m hoping to use these photographs and videos to shed some light on the plight of what’s going on. Everyone wants to come to Churchill and see the polar bears in this pristine environment but , frankly, that pristine environment is going away unless we get this trash problem under control. We’re going to set ourselves back 40 years in the quest for coexistence with polar bears.”
In this case, “it’s not fine art. I’m not making photos people are going to want to hang on their walls. But I hope the images go a long way towards solving the problem.”
Why attend a Summit?
“Events like the NANPA Summit are fun,” he said, “they’re super fun!” There’s something special about bringing together people from all over the world who have a shared interest in nature and photography and having them share ideas and experiences. “It goes a long way towards creating community. I’m really looking forward to meeting people in person who I might only know online,” he said. “I have a lot of conversations with photographers online, email, Instagram, and on social media but to be able to sit down and have a beer or have a coffee with someone … I really, really enjoy making digital friends into real life friends and that’s what I’m looking forward to at the NANPA Summit.”
And the NANPA Fellow award?
“The recognition and awards, while they’re fantastic and make me blush a little bit, lend a lot of credibility to what I’m doing and can inspire people to do stuff like it in their own back yard. These conservation battles that are raging on a regional or global scale are also happing in people’s back yards. So, I hope that bringing my story, and how I did things (by accident and by plan) will inspire others to do the same.”
Come to the NANPA Summit and meet people like Drew Hamilton, hear from speakers like Art Wolfe, William Neill, and Frans Lanting, make new friends and get inspired. And, if you run into Drew Hamilton, as him how understanding wildlife behavior, specifically bears in his case, can improve your wildlife photography.
