British Columbia

British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest is one of the continents great wildernesses; a place still minimally influenced by man, where bears and wolves still roam. A name coined by environmental groups in the 1990s, the Great Bear Rainforest, encompasses the temperate Pacific coastal forest region from Vancouver Island, north to the border with Alaska.

It is one of the largest and richest remaining tracts of unspoiled temperate rainforest left in the world that is defined by the proximity of the mountains to the east and ocean to the west and characterised by exceptionally high rainfall. Much of the areas ecological abundance is derived from the vast numbers of Pacific salmon that annually migrate up the rivers to spawn. These not only provide an annual bounty for predators like bears, wolves and eagles, but also indirectly provide the nutrients that sustains the forests themselves.

The Spirit or Kermode Bear (Ursus americanus kermodei) is a particularly special resident that only occurs on a small part of the mainland and three off-shore islands. It is a rare subspecies of Black Bear with creamy-white fur, the consequence of a double-recessive gene. Only around 10% of the population are “white” and there are perhaps no more than 300 individuals.

• Bears
• Yellowstone
• British Columbia