A professional wildlife biologist, Wayne helped establish the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Reserve on Canada's N.W. coast.
For many years, people whispered stories of a far away land of misty coastal islands and magnificent fjords inhabited by a white bear. Now others warn that giant clearcuts are encroaching this secluded haven where few people have ventured.
After a five year study, supported by such groups as Ocean Visions, Equinox Magazine, the World Wildlife Fund and Patagonia, Wayne McCrory has launched a campaign to save two incredible wilderness areas in British Columbia. The White Grizzly Wilderness and the proposed Spirit Bear Sanctuary. Both these areas are threatened by clearcut logging activities.
According to Planet Watch (a CBC Canadian T.V. Show) 1 acre of B.C. forest is cut every 12 seconds, compared to 1 acre every 9 seconds in Brazil, where most logging activities are unregulated. 74 percent of B.C.'s ancient forests has or will disappear. 90 percent of B.C.'s logging involveds clearcutting.
McCrory: If logging continues, there won't be anything left to save in 5 years.
Spirit Bear documentaries will be presented by the BBC and by Skyline Films with footage from bear expert Charlie Russell.
McCrory: Tweedsmuir Park is already protected. It includes foothills and dry interior grasslands. The Kitilope Watershed was just protected. What we have left to protect is the Spirit Bear Sanctuary and areas inbetween. Then we'd have an amazing ecosystem protected. If you stand on the mountain, in the middle of our sanctuary on one of those rare nice days when it's not rainy and foggy, you see the most incredible landscape. The ocean coming into the mountains. And on the edge of the fjord you see all these little islands and islets. Our proposal goes all the way down to Swindle Island. So we're looking at an area that encompasses almost 300,000 hectares (741.315 acres). Lots of big lakes. Rearing lakes where 5 species of salmon fry eventually spawn in the river. On the mainland, to the east of the island, there's a valley very similiar to the Khutzeymateen. With a large estuary, and equally as beautiful, where the grizzlies come in the spring to feed on the grasses. To play and grow and sleep in the forest. If you go a little further to the east, our proposal joins up with the valley that's a major victory to ecologists. The world's largest unlogged watershed called the Kitilope where I've also worked for a few years. It's a truly amazing place. There's a valley at the north end of Princess Royal Island, where they've logged the slopes and the whole valley. This area we're not working on to protect. It's gone. It's had it.
The Spirit Bear Sanctuary is very remote. It's under imminent threat from logging. Today, we're working to save this area, as well as the White Grizzly Wilderness. We are strong, but small in numbers. Behind our small shore camp there's a grove of sitka spruce trees that are up to 800 years old. Charlie Russell spent 2 whole years living in a tent, going out and filming bears. This is how it's done, this is the challenge and there are many rewards. You grow moss between your toes. Your clothes get so damp that you don't want to go near anybody. After being up there for 3 or 4 weeks you get a bit high and need to dry out.
We're doing our own forest inventory with a well known forester. They're evaluating the commercial values of the forest and also the heritage values. One tree is over 8 feet in diameter and 833 years old. Swindle Island Elders also want to see their area preserved as well. We have a rediscovery and training program with the community. They're very tuned into the land and to saving the area. Especially the fisheries, but also their cultural value. We don't have many areas on the west coast where the marine environment is protected. So we're not just talking about the forest and bear habitat, we're talking about the ocean and all the life in it. The elephant seal, which we just about lost is starting to move back. There are pods of Orcas and other whales that periodically come through the area. The 30 km (18.6 mile) fjord, running up the middle of the proposed park, also provides habitat for marbled murrelets and porpoises.
There are a multitude of little bays, inlets and estuaries used by the bears. These areas have their little pockets of use, areas that they like. It's a variable forest. The sitka spruce, western and yellow cedar, pine forest. Lots of bogs. Lots of biodiversity. One of the trees is 11 feet across with a bear den at the bottom. We barely understand the rainforest and all the intricate things that live there. In areas that never burn, more ancient than you can ever imagine.
There is more biomass in the temporate rainforest than in tropical rainforests.
McCrory: There's an amazing predator-prey system in Princess Royal Island, between Sitka Deer and Black Wolves.
Of course one of the most special things about the island are the Kermode (spirit) Bears. You think of most Kermodes as white, but most are black. We estimate only about 1 in 10 are white or light. They often range on the mainland and up the Skeena River. Our proposal encompasses the major ecocenter for these bears.
For some reason there's lots of grizzlies on the mainland, but few come onto Swindle and Princess Royal Island.
Kermodes are not small bears, up to about 500 pounds. You can tell by looking at the size of the tracks. They are well fed. The rainforest produces a great variety of food.
Exact populations are unknown, threatened by poaching, clearcutting, salmon declines and legalized hunting of black bears carrying the recessive white gene.
McCrory: They are also called ghost bears, bears of the rainforest. They are without question, the most beautiful bear in existence. Generally whitish, creamy and some have a rusty orange to gold on their back. The Kermode subspecies is not an albino.
Their genetic health and variability is maintained by bears swimming between the islands and the mainland. It's really not that far. On the Queen Charlotte Archipelago, S.W. of Princess Royal Island, you have another subspecies called the Queen Charlotte Island Black Bear. They are quite isolated from the Princess Royal Island population and probably have been isolated for quite a long time. The interesting part about that island is that there are no white bears. Sooner or later some graduate student may figure out why.
Identified as an American Black Bear subspecies in 1904, by an American Zoologist named Hornaday. They were named after Francis Kermode, the long time director of the Provincial Museum of Victoria.
Throughout the rainforest, you have some of these white bears. We believe they den in the hollow interior of large trees. When they come out from hibernation in the spring, they wander about and feed on grasses and sedges...grass like herbs..., and other succulent foods. Because the coast is warmer than the interior, they already have a berry crop to feed on by late June and early July. Mid to late July, the Salmon start running up the creek quite sporadically. By mid to late August and early September, there are major runs. Sometimes you'll have thousands of salmon staving out of the ocean in the little fjords off these creeks waiting for the rain. When the rains come, some of these creeks and rivers will rise 4 to 5 feet overnight and then the salmon go up to their spawning grounds. During this time the bears often feed on the salmon as they migrate up the rapids. Run after run, tens of thousands come back to the highlands and the mainland. They fill up the spawning grounds and a great feast begins. The sandbars and gravel bars look like bear sidewalks.
Bears have many different strategies when feeding on salmon. Not just trying to nab them when they come up the rapids or in their spawning grounds. They also will jump into a pool where salmon have died and sunk to the bottom, snorkel around, reach under and pull up the salmon. They are really excellent fishers. Or after a rain and the river drops, they seem to know that log jams are the pools where most of the salmon carcasses have been washed to.
We still have, in Canada and British Columbia, some amazing wild areas. Bear areas that are totally world class. Whole ecosystems, fisheries, bears, old growth and cultural value that are treasure troves. Not just for ourselves, but for the whole world. The pressure that mills and loggers are putting on the forest, as we overcut. As we export raw trees. I can tell you, from 25 years of experience, that I'm 52 years old. By the time I'm 60, if we don't write letters and work together to save these areas, they won't be there to save. They're going so quickly it's frightening.
This magnificent island with it's expanse of rainforest, it's white bears and salmon are still there. It's still there to visit, to see, to appreciate and to film. Unless we work harder, and do more, it's not going to be there in 1998. I am willing to go to jail for the White Grizzly Wilderness and the Spirit Bear Sanctuary, but I don't believe in using any kind of terrorist tactics. It's not the way to solve problems. I believe in the good of the people and the will of the people which is growing worldwide. I'm asking you to help us, a handful of people who have dedicated their lives to bears and wilderness, to help us save these 2 areas.
We saved the Khutzeymateen because people spoke out. No blockades, just thousands of letters by people who said I don't think that I'll ever go to the Khutzeymateen but I've seen a picture of it and I don't want to see it destroyed. People often say I don't know what I can do, I feel so small and if I write a letter, I'll just get a form letter back. But the letters worked. The T.V. documentaries and articles worked. And it could work for these two areas. But because of the politics, we need everyone who reads this article to speak out about saving the White Grizzly Wilderness and the Spirit Bear Sanctuary. Even though you may get back a letter saying what a good job the B.C. Government's already doing, your voice will count. Don't wait, send a letter or forward a signed and postal addressed E-mail message to animal@cuug.ab.ca and they will print your opinion on 100 percent recycled paper and mail it in.
Do it right now.
B.C. draws more revenue from wilderness tourism than any other province or state in North America. Ironically, most of their wilderness is unprotected, threatened by logging and industrial development.
A U.S. Forest Service analysis shows that recreational use of National Forests amounts to an economic value nine times greater than logging.
McCrory: Animals like the Grizzly bear need to wander and require large areas of wilderness.
Parks all over North America are losing biodiversity because they are too
small to provide adequate space for viable...capable of
living...populations and feeding grounds. Individuals are forced outside
park boundaries to look for food or territory.
Scientists agree that roads next to protected areas are speeding the
decline of Grizzlies in the U.S. and Canada by allowing hunters and
poachers easy access.
McCrory: Another critically important need for preserving complete undisturbed ecosystems is that there is so much we don't know about the organisms that compose them and how they function. These areas can provide baseline data against which to measure the impacts of ecological disturbance elsewhere.
In his analysis report, professional forester Ray Travers has concluded that only 8.5 percent of the White Grizzly Wilderness is economically suitable for timber extraction. Some of these trees are up to 1,000 years old.
The B.C. Government will make it's decision based on CORE's...Commission on Resources and Environment...report and public opinion. Forest and mining industries are lobbying against protecting the bears and their habitat, their letters are pouring in.
Grizzlies prefer alpine areas and back valleys, hibernating in rock caves or excavating dens in slopes. Black Bears avoid the alpine, denning in tree bases or caves. This natural strategy allows these two species to coexist.
After the Khutzeymateen Valley was designated as Canada's first Grizzly Sanctuary, the Valhalla Society now focuses on two areas in ancient temporate rainforests of unique value to bears and biodiversity.
Twenty-five years of overcutting the forest has concentrated wildlife into areas like the White Grizzly Wilderness. Where will all the animals live if this area is logged?
On the middle of B.C.'s coast, the proposed Spirit Bear Sanctuary encompasses the southern half of Princess Royal Island and the adjoining mainland of Green-Khutze Inlet. Within the diverse ancient rainforest and mainland fjords thrives a subspecies of North American Black Bear known as Kermode. Connecting the Spirit Bear Park with the newly protected Kitilope Valley, will preserve the largest area of unlogged temperate rainforest left on earth.
If you would like to determine the future of the Kermode, White
Grizzly and many other animals that inhabit these pristine areas, please
E-mail your opinion immediately to animal@cuug.ab.ca to be printed on 100
percent recycled paper and sent to the Ministry of the Environment. If
you would prefer to send your own, Direct it to:
Attention: Moe Sihota
Minister of Lands, Parks and Environment
Parliament Buildings
Victoria, B.C.
V8V 1X4
U.S. residents please remember it costs .40 to send a letter to Canada.
Here's a letter that you are welcome to copy, if you are too busy to write your own.
Dear Mr. Sihota:
After reading about the Spirit Bear and White Grizzly in Animalwatch, I
strongly support the following areas be fully protected by the British
Columbia Government and be excluded, now and in the future, from all
logging and industrial activity:
1. Proposed Spirit Bear Provincial Park of 300,000 hectares, 741,315 acres, as recommended by the Valhalla Society.
2. Proposed White Grizzly Wilderness of 118,000 hectares, 291,584 acres as recommended by the Valhalla Society.
I__...your name..._____, at_________...your mailing address...____________________________ of______...your city...________________, _____...state or province...____________ will be discussing this issue with others and await your decision on this matter. Thank you.
You can inform me by sending your decision to be announced in the journal Animalwatch, Box 402, Stn M, Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2J1. Your decision will also be included in their new Internet Animalwatch Home Page.