The North Shore Spring Bear Festival Society is very excited to present TWO renowned bear experts on the same stage for the first time …..at the 1st Annual North Shore Bear Festival, April 23 to 29th, 2007. Come ‘Celebrate Our Bears’ with Us! Check Out: http://www.northshorebearfest.com

Benjamin Kilham & Charlie Russell

Presentation at West Vancouver: April 27, 2007, Kay Meek Centre, 7:00pm (604) 913-3634

Benjamin Kilham enchanted the world with his stories of mothering twenty-six black bear cubs over the last ten years. National Geographic called him Mother Bear Man. In his presentation, Kilham reveals an extraordinary first person account of wild black bear behavior.

In the Spring of 1993 Kilham, a woodsman from New Hampshire, took in a pair of orphaned wild black bears. It wasn’t until these first cubs denned up for the winter that he had time to reflect upon his observations. After the 395 hours he had just spent walking with the cubs in their natural world, the 510 hours he spent caring for them, and the 96 hours he spent taking field notes, he knew more than the dozen scientific articles that existed on black bears. He had, in fact, discovered unknown facets of bear behavior that could radically revise our understanding of animal behavior.

Without an existing model of bear behavior, Kilham set out to create one based on his observations. Watching the daily development of the cubs and slowly adding new sets of cubs to his family, enabled Kilham to check and recheck his analysis. In the end, Kilham’s presentation reveals that black bears are highly social individuals, who share resources, form hierarchies, and who have structured kinship relationships. They have the ability to share insight, to plan, deceive, and to communicate intentionally with an innate physical and verbal language. Benjamin Kilham’s book AMONG THE BEARS: Raising Orphan Cubs in the Wild(2002) is at once a groundbreaking work of science and a truly personal story of the bond between animals and humans. Heralded as “Compelling…a vivid picture of ursine social life and intelligence” by the New York Times Book Review. Kilham’s latest documentary video is called Papa Bear.

Charlie Russell says that for centuries man has used words like “unpredictable, ferocious, aggressive” to describe the grizzly bear. Man’s fear of the great bear has driven them to extinction across the world. Today this fear still perpetuates the endless cycle of violence between people and bears which continues to threaten their survival. But it doesn’t have to be this way….. Through more than 40 years of field observations Charlie Russell has learned that it is possible for man and bear to live peacefully side by side.
For the past 11 years Charlie has been living with grizzly bears in Russia. In that time he has rescued 10 orphaned grizzly cubs from a Russian zoo, taking them to the area near his wilderness cabin in the South Kamchatka Sanctuary where he teaches them to be independent again. In the heart of some of the most populated grizzly bear habitat in the world, he has been providing the human inhabitants with a few simple rules by which man and bear can live in peace.

In addition to raising the cubs, Charlie’s work has been to examine three central questions about bears: Are they unpredictable? Can they be trusted if they lose their fear of man? How do they respond if treated with kindness, trust and respect rather than fear and aggression?

Like other pioneers in animal/human relations such as Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and George and Joy Adamson, Charlie Russell has gone further into the world of the grizzly bear than anyone before and is convinced that the grizzly bear is nothing like the animal we have always believed it to be.

He is now working with communities in Canada to learn the people side of the story. Charlie Russell has authored: Grizzly Heart(2003) and co-authored Grizzly Seasons (2003) and Spirit Bear (1992) Russell’s latest documentary by BBC is called Bear Man of Kamchatka and it will be aired in Canada in 2007.

Many Thanks to Sponsors to Date:

Grizzly Club: Shell Environmental Fund, B.C. Conservation Officer Service

Black Bear Club: District of North Vancouver, City of North Vancouver, District of West Vancouver, North Shore News, CopyThis Inc.

Bear Cub Club: Investor’s Group, Rollins Machinery,

Many thanks to: Sandra Dawson, Web Consultant, Trina Mousseau, Event & PR Specialist, Jen Wold, Web Design