What it’s like to report in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest

Guest Blog by Anne Casselman at Scientific American

Editor’s note: This post is part of a four-part series that Anne Casselman, a freelance writer and regular contributor to Scientific American, reported in early June during a rare opportunity to conduct field reporting on grizzly bears in Heiltsuk First Nation traditional territory in British Columbia. For more on her experience there, see this slide show and this story on ongoing research to gauge the nutritional impact of poor salmon runs on grizzly bears.

HEILTSUK TRADITIONAL TERRITORY, British Columbia—I land in the Great Bear Rainforest to hit the ground running to report a series of stories for Scientific American on local research on grizzly bears. The Jet Ranger Bell 206 helicopter that myself and photographer Dean Azim have hitched a ride on from Campbell River, an hour and a half flight from Vancouver Island over to Shearwater on the Central Coast, has barely landed on the lawn at the Shearwater dock before the Raincoast Conservation field crew have trundled our gear into their 17-foot boat, Wyatt, to begin the day’s work: finish the last round of sampling and dismantle grizzly bear hair-snagging stations for the year (Raincoast is singular as a BC environment non-profit in its remit to conduct conservation science research and publish it in peer-reviewed journals).

To read the rest of this article, please visit the Scientific American website.

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