Travel: Call Of The Wild

In shallow tidal waters near Knight Inlet Lodge, in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest, I catch sight of two grizzlies, the first I have ever seen in the wild. Four-year-olds, they hang out and fool around, rather like human teenagers. Then five more bears stroll out of the forest--a female with a golden cub and another mother with two cubs. The mothers nurse the 18-month-old cubs and scoop up some of the hundreds of thousands of salmon on their way up the inlet to spawn and die. Then another bear appears, followed by tiny triplets. This excites my guide, Owen Nevin, a Utah State University doctoral student whose subject is inlet bears, even more than it does me. It's unusual, he explains, for anyone to see a mother with three "young-of-the-year" cubs. I'm jubilant, aware of how privileged I am to be able to spend the morning with 11 of the grandest animals on the planet.

In fact, I am a happy camper, or in more formal terms, a satisfied ecotourist, defined by the Ecotourism Society as someone engaged in "responsible travel to natural areas, which conserves the environment and improves the welfare of local people." Here in the Great Bear Rainforest--which lies between Knight Inlet, about 100 air miles northwest of Vancouver, and the Alaska border--are some of the highest concentrations of grizzlies in North America. Up to three times as many live here as in all the U.S. Not only can I commune (at a safe distance) with the bears; I can get amazingly close to orcas, bald eagles, ospreys, sea otters and seals. I can even swim with the salmon, which I did on Vancouver Island on my way to Knight Inlet.

Eco- and adventure tourists are expected to spend more than $6.5 billion in 2000 in British Columbia alone. Nature travel is the fastest-growing segment of the tourism industry worldwide, increasing from 20% to 30% annually in recent years. Many of the 13 million Americans who travel to Canada for leisure each year participate in outdoor activities. When Dean Wyatt bought Knight Inlet Lodge in 1996, all his business was sports fishing; now it is 98% ecotourism. Since 1993 the number of Canadian-based ecotourist operators like Wyatt has tripled, to more than 2,100.

Ecotourists will spend plenty of money on these learning adventures. A five-day complete package at Knight Inlet Lodge, which includes the flight to and from Vancouver Island, accommodations and food, boat tours, wildlife viewing, presentations, tracking, kayaking and fishing, costs a couple up to $4,720. Still this is much less than an equivalent safari in Africa--and less than many similar adventures offered by U.S. outfitters, in part because of the weak Canadian dollar.

In return for spending thousands of dollars on a vacation, wildlife viewers want knowledgeable and personable guides and staff. At Knight Inlet Lodge, the guests applaud the staff, no less attractive than the Baywatch gang, only fully clothed and better educated. Guest Larry Jandrew of Asheville, N.C., who brought a family party of himself and seven others to the lodge, was particularly taken by Meg Pocklington, a Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Center research assistant, who during a long hike through the rain forest took special care of Jandrew's mother-in-law Kitty Conley. Pat Chadwick and Sam Twyford, a retired couple from Australia, were struck by how "friendly--and environmentally conscious" Canadians are.