Venturing into Khutzeymateen: Canada’s only grizzly bear sanctuary

Hidden deep in northwest British Columbia’s coast lies the lush inlet of the Khutzeymateen, bustling with grizzly bears and other rich fauna.

Created in 1994 as the first specially protected area for grizzly bears and their habitat in Canada, it’s widely regarded as the densest natural grizzly bear habitat in North America. The sanctuary is located about 45 kilometres northeast of Prince Rupert and only is accessible by boat or plane.

The Gits’iis tribe of the Lax Kw’alaams Band has been the steward of this region for thousands of years. The area became protected through an agreement with the B.C. Government and the Tsimshian First Nation three decades ago, and has helped conserve the grizzly bear population that calls the Khutzeymateen their home, as well as preserve the social, ceremonial and cultural uses of the Coast Tsimshian who depend on the area.

Two rangers from the Tsimshian Gits’iis tribe are situated at the K’tzim-a-deen Ranger Station at Khutzeymateen Inlet — K’tzim-a-deen translates to “valley at the head of the inlet” in the Tsimshian language of the Gits’iis people. They keep track of bear sightings and any commercial activity, monitoring people’s behaviours around the bears and staying involved in the ecology of the area.

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Each year from May to the end of July, Prince Rupert Adventure Tours takes passengers on their yellow catamaran to one of the only places on the planet where grizzly bears can be observed in their natural habitat, living freely in the wilderness.

Khutzeymateen is also a vibrant haven for bald eagles, seals, sea lions, orcas, humpback whales and mountain goats, while coastal wolves also roam the rugged landscape. Nearby waters invite glimpses of majestic whales and playful dolphins, showcasing the area’s rich biodiversity.

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The bears of Khutzeymateen

Jasmine Newton, a tour guide with Prince Rupert Adventure Tours, says that of the 40 to 50 bears that roam the 45,000 hectare sanctuary, some can be territorial.

“We’ve seen that happen with some of the females that we know really well. Hot Chocolate is a bear (and) she’s got a son named Marshmallow who we watched almost every day last year, and so we’ve noticed kind of fluctuations with them.

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“Usually grizzly bears will kick out their young at about two to three years, but she kicked him out a little bit early, and so we kind of saw them moving between different territories last year. He kept trying to follow her and get back on her good side and spend time with mom again, but she wouldn’t let him.”

The sanctuary mainly has grizzlies, but there have been sightings of black bears before, However, grizzlies don’t like to associate with black bears, so when their paths do cross – typically at the beginning of the season right when grizzlies come out of hibernation – it can be fatal for black bears.

“Some of the bears are transitory, so they’ll move in and out. Most of them are resident bears, we think. They’ll have their dens up in the alpine habitats, and they’ll stay there for five months out of the year. The rest of the time, they’re down along the shorelines hunting for salmon.

“From July onwards, they’re looking for berries; around this time of year, in the very beginning of the season, they like things like skunk cabbages and bulbous roots, and sedge grass is a really important part of their diet.”

Bears forage for shellfish and clams and consume about 40 to 60 pounds of protein-rich sedge grass each day. Salmon is the most important part of their diet, while the other things they eat help sustain them. Without salmon, the bears would not be able to build enough body fat to last through hibernation, Newton says.

Threats to the sanctuary’s bears

“Grizzly bear habitat used to be all over North America, specifically in B.C. It used to go all the way down to Vancouver. But they’ve been pushed out of their territory by human encroachment…This is one of the last intact grizzly bear habitats in North America,” Newton says.

Overfishing in northern coastal waters also poses a significant threat to the grizzlies, the salmon populations and the sanctuary itself.

“Something that has been on my mind recently is that we have lots of bottom trawler licenses in the Chatham Sound. If you look at bottom trawling, it’s a really unsustainable practice of fishing that contributes to a lot of the overfishing we see here, specifically for salmon,” Newton says.

Bottom trawling was banned in all new Canadian Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) established after April 25, 2018. However, the ban does not apply retroactively to MPAs established before that date.

“Without the healthy salmon populations, the bears would not survive here. The reason the bears do so well here and on a broader level, in northern B.C., is because we have some of the largest intact rivers here, like the Skeena and the Nass.”

Newton is also an Environmental Studies and Indigenous Studies double-major at the University of Victoria. She stressed the present threat of climate change that will impact the sanctuary in the future.

“With climate change comes a lot of animals and tons of wildlife that are going to be forced from down south to up north, to a sanctuary such as this, so we might not have enough intact ecosystems to support that, as well as, connectability, so there might not be safe passages for these wildlife to come up from down south.”

Bears are also not hibernating as long as they should in the winter due to recent warmer winters.

“They’re generally not going to go out and kill a moose, so they’re not going to have a major food source through the wintertime. They could dig for grass or roots underneath the snow, but then they’d have to waste energy going down the mountainside. So it’s better for them to just go through hibernation, but they have to have enough salmon in order to do that.”

Eco-tourism

BC Parks, Lax Kw’alaams and Commercial Bear Viewing Association work in collaboration to ensure the Khutzeymateen Protected Areas are managed proactively and public access is monitored conservatively to ensure the grizzly bears and their habitats are the first priority.

In 1994, Captain Doug Davis founded, Prince Rupert Adventure Tours, a marine ecotourism business to showcase the amazing wildlife and scenery of the Pacific Northwest.

Bear viewing guides like Captain Davis’ contribute a per person donation to the Khutzeymateen Park Enhancement Fund, which supports shared stewardship initiatives for the area.

“Any tourism business at its core is a little bit extractive. There is always going to be some impact, whether that be from our fuel emissions or our presence itself. But, I think our impact is very minimal,” Newton says.

“It’s all on a sliding scale in my brain for tourism, because if you look down south in the Victoria and Vancouver area, whale watching has been detrimental, especially to the southern resident killer whales,” she said. “Up here, it’s not exactly the same because we’re the only tourist boat of this scale for hundreds of kilometres.

The captain says bear sightings have been fairly steady throughout his 30-year career. The month of May also witnesses the mating season.

The tour typically sees between five and 10 bear sightings each trip. However, every day is different with no guarantees. The tour boat observes precautions to minimally disturb the environment around it. Its primary goal was to leave the grizzly bears and the inlet in the same natural state they found it.

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