Canadian Grizzly Preserve Is Sanctuary From Reality

Clouds drift up against steep mountainsides. Eagles ride the updrafts overhead. Otters and seals backstroke alongside a rare sailboat gliding by. The only other signs of man are the occasional fluorescent orange buoys marking the prawn traps of commercial fishermen.

And then the biggest, toughest grizzly bear in the neighborhood emerges from the surrounding tangle of spruce, hemlock and huckleberry and onto a beach beside the river.

Biologists who study this area have named him Buffalo, and it’s easy to see why. From a quarter of a mile offshore, he does look as big as a bison. He’s an 800-pound slab of muscle and mud-colored fur that moves with surprising agility among the rocks, tree stumps and fallen timber.

And Buffalo is excited this late spring morning. He is in amorous pursuit of a younger, quicker, not entirely cooperative female, and his huffing and snorting can be heard mid-river.

Researchers believe that Buffalo, who is 20 years old or so, stands at the apex of a complex wildlife hierarchy that exists in the befogged, rain-saturated Khutzeymateen Valley. It may be the best place now on the continent to scrutinize the grizzly bear, which once numbered in the thousands and ranged from the Pacific Coast to the Great Lakes and from the Arctic Circle to northern Mexico.

Floating closer to shore, visitors can see clearly the crosshatching of jagged scars on Buffalo’s back, testimony to battles won over other grizzlies in his climb to dominance. Dan Wakefield, the guide on the boat, notes that even the valley’s two wolf packs now steer clear of this bear.

Bears Come First

The main reason that Buffalo has reached an advanced age for a grizzly, however, is that he has been spared most contact with people--early in his life by the valley’s relative isolation and more recently by the decision of the provincial government of British Columbia to designate this area Canada’s first grizzly bear preserve.

“The Khut”--the only place in Canada where the needs of the bears always come before the needs of people--has become a showcase for Canadian conservationists, a place of pilgrimage for researchers and nature enthusiasts and a symbol in this country’s struggle to reconcile the heritage of its vast wild lands with the expanding demands of its timber, mining and tourism industries.

Wildlife experts frame the question simply for visitors: In an era when the grizzly clings to its existence in North America, can the Khutzeymateen be the model for preserves stretching from the Yukon to the American Rockies? Or is it the last redoubt for the grizzly outside Alaska?

Despite dedication of the Khutzeymateen preserve in 1994 and plans--as yet unfulfilled--for more bear sanctuaries in British Columbia, Canada has done relatively little to protect the grizzly. Between 400 and 600 Canadian grizzlies are legally shot by hunters each year, and the World Wildlife Fund estimates that a similar number are killed by poachers. An even greater threat, experts say, is posed by urban development, logging and mining, which are pushing ever deeper into the Canadian wilderness.

Wildlife protection laws here are weak when compared with those in the U.S., and scientific research is so poorly funded and sketchy that there even is disagreement on the number of grizzlies in Canada. The most commonly quoted figure is 22,000; some researchers think this is high.

Bear specialists fear that Canada is repeating the errors of the Lower 48 states, where the grizzly population was driven to near-extinction by hunting and habitat destruction and where only about 1,000 survive in what one biologist called “wilderness ghettos” in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington.

“We in Canada have this myth of overabundance of wildlife,” said Wayne McCrory, a bear researcher who was instrumental in persuading the government to establish the Khutzeymateen preserve. “We still think we can kill 400 grizzlies a year for trophies, and we’re depleting our forests and the resources connected with them at a level that’s probably unprecedented in the world. . . . I’ve been studying these animals for 20 years, and I can tell you the trend is not good.”

Pressures have developed on grizzlies even in Canada’s national parks, where increasing tourism has forced the bears out of their favored habitat and resulted in rising fatalities from collisions with cars and trains.

‘A Living Museum’

What sets the Khutzeymateen apart from other parks in Canada and the United States is the way the government has minimized human intrusion. “In the Khutzeymateen, we set up a model, we set a priority that here was an area that was first for the bears, with some limited people use,” McCrory said. “It’s really a living museum.”

The 111,195-acre sanctuary surrounds a twisting fiord where the Khutzeymateen River flows into the Pacific, about 50 miles from the nearest human habitation--an Indian village of 1,000 called Port Simpson. The area can be reached only by boat or float plane, and the provincial government, which administers the preserve in partnership with the local Indians, closely regulates the 200 or so outsiders permitted entry each year.

About half the visitors arrive under the guidance of Wakefield, a lean and weather-burned sailor of 54 who has been bringing people into grizzly country for more than a decade on his home-built 40-foot ketch, Sunchaser. He is one of two licensed guides in the park.

A journey into the Khutzeymateen with Wakefield brings visitors into contact with a near-pristine expanse of woodland, water and wildlife, accompanied by a running commentary that is deeply affectionate and fiercely protective of the area’s grizzlies.

Often Wakefield delivers it with a sort of New Age Canadian accent, as in: “The bears just want to be left alone to do their own thing, eh?” He talks about grizzlies sensing the “good vibes” of eco-tourists and the “killer vibes” of hunters, and gently lectures on the “therapeutic value” of looking at trees.

Wakefield has assigned the bears names and personalities, in defiance of scientific dictums against anthropomorphism. But on a four-day journey into the valley, even a skeptic might be forced to acknowledge that the bears exhibit individual traits.

There are, for example, the canny maneuvers of a young, undersized male whom Wakefield has named Ice Bear. (He first was spotted scrambling down a frozen stream bed.)

On the afternoon of Sunchaser’s arrival, Ice Bear greeted its inhabitants by swimming to an island in the river and grazing close to a raft filled with people. It became apparent only later that he was using the raft to shield himself from a larger, potentially hostile bear sprawled across a boulder on shore. Sensing the larger bear’s wariness toward humans, Ice Bear remained within hailing distance of the raft until his rival moved away.

The two bears were playing out a subtle exercise in dominance. According to McCrory, researchers are not entirely sure how hierarchy is determined among groups like the 60 or so bears in the Khutzeymateen, just as they are not certain why older males sometimes kill cubs; much must hinge on periodic combat, and longevity might also play a role.

For example, Buffalo’s principal rival in the Khutzeymateen is an equally large but much younger male that McCrory calls Lefty. It appears that, after an initial challenge, Lefty has been content to stay away from Buffalo, foraging for the most part across the river.

Researchers acknowledge that the legendary ferocity of the grizzly has contributed to Canadians’ ambivalence toward their preservation. This is an animal that can cover 100 yards in two-thirds the time of an Olympic sprinter and can kill with one swipe of a paw. There are one or two fatal grizzly bear attacks most summers in Canada, but wildlife biologists say most attacks can be avoided. They maintain that the grizzly’s killer instinct has been exaggerated. Conservationists even have begun quietly lobbying the Vancouver Grizzlies basketball team to change the snarling bear image on its logo to a more benign portrait.

Debunking Image of Ferocity

Like most researchers these days, Wakefield avoids carrying firearms around bears, favoring as protection a cayenne pepper spray that has proved to be an effective repellent. But he maintains that in 10 years as a guide, he has never faced a charging grizzly.

The more frequent experience, Wakefield says, is the camera-friendly posing of the Khutzeymateen bear he calls Lucy, a grizzly so comfortable with photographers that she has become a staple of postcards, coffee-table books and hundreds of private picture albums. Wakefield recognizes Lucy in part by a distinctive circular scar on her backside, acquired, he speculates, from a fall down a rocky slope.

Lucy was the object of Buffalo’s attentions this spring, and she may give birth to her first cubs next year. But that is far from certain. Grizzlies are among the slowest mammals to mature and reproduce. Once females begin to breed, they do so only once every two or three years.

The Khutzeymateen bears have had some sort of protected status for more than a decade--the area was placed off limits to hunting and logging even before it was officially designated a preserve. Yet its grizzly population has increased by only five to 10 bears over that period.

Wakefield was deeply involved in the decade-long campaign to preserve the Khutzeymateen, a role he admits did not always endear him to friends and neighbors in Prince Rupert, a port city on British Columbia’s upper coast where he sells insurance when he’s not on the water.

Like many British Columbia towns north of Vancouver, Prince Rupert remains heavily invested in western Canada’s timber and hunting industries, interests that regard the expansion of wilderness sanctuaries with deep suspicion. “What I kept hearing was, ‘Dan’s the one who’s ruining our economy,’ ” Wakefield recalled.

The entrance to the Khutzeymateen is marked by a wedge in the spruce forest, evidence of the logging that was planned before the government imposed a moratorium. As the Sunchaser sails upriver, Wakefield points to recent gashes in the shoreline where pirate loggers have illegally cut trees and floated them out on barges under cover of night.

His current campaign aims to outlaw fishing in the Khutzeymateen River. (The protected zone encompasses only land areas.) When a passing trawler startled some bears on shore by loudly dropping a hatch cover, Wakefield turned to his passengers and noted: “The Khutzeymateen is saved, but not completely saved, eh? Until they’re out of here, there still won’t be any peace for the bears.”

McCrory admits to some disappointment in the Khutzeymateen: “They gave us half the park we proposed, and then they logged the hell out of the area around it.” He now is campaigning to preserve bear habitat near the Canadian-U.S. border.

Because grizzlies can range over hundreds of miles, those living near the international boundary in places like Glacier National Park, Mont., often move back and forth between the United States, where they are protected, and Canada, where, outside of protected areas, they are big game.

“It’s pretty clear the greatest danger to [American] grizzlies is in Canada,” said Mike Gibeau, a researcher who has recorded the declining bear population in and near Banff National Park in the province of Alberta. “The United States, with its Endangered Species Act and other laws, is pretty sensitive. . . . But Canadians think we have this great wilderness, like Banff park, and bears live in the wilderness, so they must be all right. But we’ve already demonstrated that the bears in Banff park are greatly endangered.”

An attempt by the Canadian government this spring to enact a watered-down version of the endangered species law that the United States adopted in 1973 was killed in Parliament by a coalition of development, logging and mining interests.

Resistance From Timber Industry

British Columbia, meanwhile, is moving slowly on a study of grizzly bear habitat ostensibly aimed at re-creating the Khutzeymateen experience elsewhere in the province. Conservationists have run up against the powerful timber industry, which still accounts, directly or indirectly, for nearly half the province’s economy and which opposes closing off more land to logging.

Tony Hamilton, a bear expert with the provincial park service, said he remains hopeful that a chain of bear sanctuaries can be extended the length of the Canadian coast, but acknowledges, “I’m not so naive as to believe bear conservation isn’t 5% bear issues and 95% people issues.” The government, he says, will have to balance wildlife conservation with economic needs.