Spirit Bear: Icon for an Endangered Ecosystem

A rare form of black bear--that is actually white--faces threats to its survival in its British Columbia habitat

FROM THE DOCK of British Columbia's Hartley Bay, guide Marvin Robinson looks across the waters of the Douglass Channel to Gribbell Island. The 96-square-mile island--thickly forested in hemlock, cedar and fir--is home to the world's highest concentration of the rare "spirit bear"--a pale color variant of the American black bear. Long revered by the First Nations of British Columbia, scientists dubbed it the Kermode bear in 1905 after one of the first scientists to study the species, Francis Kermode. ... READ MORE at NATIONAL WILDLIFE.