Vancouver Sun
 
The grace of a grazing grizzly
Tour from Prince Rupert fulfils visitors’ dreams of seeing the mighty bears within the safety of Canada’s first sanctuary for them
 Khutz Young Grizzly
Jeff Lukovich
Special to The Sun

Saturday, August 18, 2007

WHAT:

Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary

WHY:

The animal moves through the grass, grazing as placidly as a cow at pasture. Then she sits back on her haunches, calmly looks over at us, and from this distance — about 15 metres — with her button nose, rounded ears, big brown eyes, well, she looks like nothing more than an overgrown teddy bear.

But as we move closer, and she begins to move over the beach again, we take note of those curved 10-cm claws, what appear to be a healthy set of incisors, and the huge hump of coiled muscle just above her shoulders. The urge to cuddle quickly disappears.

We’re in the presence of ursus arctos horribilis, more commonly known as the grizzly bear — the largest land mammal and carnivore in North America. According to The Smithsonian Book of North American Mammals, a grizzly can kill a cow with one blow, outrun a horse, out-swim an Olympian, and drag a dead elk uphill.

Fortunately there are no cows, horses, elk or Olympians on our boat to irritate this grizzly. Oblivious to us, she moves slowly, surely and gracefully over beach, grass and rock outcropping, motivated only, it seems, by the sedge grass buffet growing thickly between beach and forest.

WHERE:

We are about 45 km northeast of Prince Rupert. Here the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary was established in 1994 as the first area in Canada to be protected specifically for grizzly bears and their habitat. It’s also the first undisturbed estuary of its size to be protected along B.C.’s north coast.

Water-based viewing of the estuary and shoreline from the inlet is permitted and we are here with Prince Rupert Adventure Tours. They run a six-hour tour to the park aboard an 18-metre boat.

The tour leaves from Prince Rupert and as it travels north through Chatham Sound, our guide, Normand Aubin, fills us in on the natural and human history of the area. We pass the ancient village of Metlakatla, which in 1862 became re-established as a Christian mission, and in 1874 boasted the largest church north of San Francisco and west of Chicago. Further on we pass Port Simpson, established as a fur-trading post by the Hudson Bay Co. in 1834.

Then we enter Khutzeymateen Inlet, a stunningly beautiful fjord, with rugged peaks towering 2,100 metres above old-growth rainforest, cascading waterfalls, and river estuaries. This is perfect coastal bear habitat from May through July — beaches with grass. And the area is populated by up to 50 grizzlies, one of the largest known concentrations along the B.C. coast. When they come out of hibernation, the bears eat plants including berries and skunk cabbage, but their staple is the abundant sedge grass, 18 to 27 kg of it per day.

The bears don’t view us as either a food source or a threat. According to Aubin, they are habituated to boats and will ignore us as long as we are on the water. This allows for close viewing opportunities. We observe four individual bears on different beaches. They range in colour from dark brown to blond, all of them voraciously feeding and apparently completely unconcerned with our presence.

We visit the floating ranger-guardian station in the inlet near the estuary. It contains a small but excellent interpretation centre with information about the life cycle and habits of the grizzly bear and other inhabitants of this ecosystem, as well as information about local first nations history and culture.

The sanctuary is home to a broad range of other wildlife including black bear, mountain goat, marten, wolverine, wolf, porcupine, river otter, beaver and harbour seal. The watershed supports songbirds, raptors, waterfowl and shorebirds including the marbled murrelet. Runs of salmon and steelhead occur in the area’s rivers and streams.

The weather is fine; the bear viewing is great and Normand checks to see if anyone has a tight deadline, before asking if we’d mind extending the tour by an hour or so. No one objects. Passengers on the boat are from many countries including Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and a large contingent from Holland. Asked what drew him here, one of the Dutch travellers gestures broadly to the surrounding panorama of mountains, forest, and water: “In Europe you can’t find scenes like this…” he says, “the wildlife, these green places with no sign of human interference.”