In a moss-draped rain forest in British Columbia, towering red cedars live a thousand years, and black bears are born with white fur.
On a drizzly autumn morning on the coast of British Columbia, a shadowy figure lumbers down to shore. A black bear has come to eat. It’s spawning season. Egg-heavy fish glut the streams of Gribbell Island, a small piece of Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest coastal temperate rain forests in the world. The bear pauses on a patch of rockweed algae to sniff the air. The rain and mist can’t mask the funky rot. Pink and chum salmon carcasses lie tangled in linguine strands of tidal sedge. The bear moves like a silhouette across the landscape, its black fur blending in with the dark rocks and dusky woods.
Marven Robinson spots the bear but turns away, uninterested. “We might have better luck upstream,” he says. Robinson, 43, stocky and swathed in rain gear, is a wildlife guide and member of the Gitga’at First Nation, whose traditional territory includes Gribbell Island. This bear isn’t what he’s looking for. He’s after a more revered and rare creature: what the Gitga’at call mooksgm’ol, the spirit bear, a walking contradiction—a white black bear.
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Notes:
I was contacted by National Geographic some time ago regarding a couple of stories they felt my readers might be interested in. At that time there was a mail strike and I wanted to wait until I had the magazine in my hot little hands before I did anything with them.
“Lo and behold” I got two magazines about a week apart very recently and selected the two stories I’ve featured today from the latest because of the economic importance of the “east-west” pipeline from Alberta to B.C. and the concerns of the native bands regarding same.
If you are interested in the debate both stories are excellent reads and will help flesh out your understanding of same.
Update:
I will add after some thought that the story regarding the “Spirit Bear” getting such wide ranging exposure causes me some concern because until now very few knew it existed. I don’t know whether the kermode bear is on the protected species list but if not it should be. Perhaps someone can enlighten me on that point.
This pipeline will never be built. Better to push a line south thru the Alberta foothills to the US border and then to the Washington State coast. The US can buy all the crude and refine it then ship it to Asia if they like. If Canada wants the Asia market, then ship by tanker train to Rupert. The pipeline group is wasting their money – the environmentalists will win this battle.
The sinking of the Queen of the North had nothing to do with the route, all about a couple of former love birds in the wheel house!!
Re: “This pipeline will never be built.”
Disagree. It can be providing it is “made safe” as well as the tanker routes in and out of the loading area. That’s technology and we now have it. “Hoomans” no longer need guide these huge ships if they are properly equipped.
Computers can do most of it.
Jack, if you want to get the “Hoomans” riled up just say “tanker traffic”. If it were ever to become an election issue, any party supporting it would be defeated. That’s why both the BCDippers and the BCLibs won’t touch it (BCCons might but that would surely spell doom for any chances – IMHO). Washington State on the other hand would love to have a big shipping port/refinery – Bellingham radio has advertisements on every day supporting a venture of this kind (near Cherry Point Refinery). They want the jobs as Boeing has flown the coop for friendlier climates.
Just saying that bears are more important than oil jobs and the enviros are pushing the eco-tourist angle at all costs. I worked pipelines in my youth and they are safe and very little damage is done to the surroundings as they put them in the ground but one little spill and bingo all hell breaks loose.
As for “computers” doing the work – they can get man into space but don’t let MicroSoft touch the gamer panel driving the ship!!
What can I say? “Edjamacation” is strongly needed in your neck of the woods. We begin today and “yah, me too”.
Protected species list? This is the very common black bear with a genetic mutation.
So naturally the environmentally sensitive BC government removed an actually accessible 1.8 MILLION HECTARES ( 4.4 million acres – 2X the size of Yellowstone Park) from any use, with severe restrictions in the surrounding 6.3 MILLION HECTARES ( 15.5 million acres).
Please don’t think you’ll ever visit – visitors are restricted those who can pay a couple of thousand per person per night – with the BC taxpayer picking up the infrastructure costs. Remembering back, I do believe this was my 2nd disillusionment with the BC Liberal Party’s governance.
Re:”Protected species list? This is the very common black bear with a genetic mutation.”
I’ll let the debate develop because I’m not there and don’t know. But I think it important to the people who have lived with it for thousands of years and can stop this pipeline right in it’s tracks if they feel the fate of the “spirit bear” (amongst many other concerns) causes them distress.
They are correct and we can work it out if we plan properly. That is all they asking and we should hear them.
I will add that this country is NOT the US who hunted down and killed their natives in the past who rebelled. In this country we listen to them and work with them. It takes far more time but in the end everyone ends up “happy”.
And that is as it should be because we are all ‘One Country’ — one people — that is where we are going.
As we should.