Great Bear Wild (Dispatches from a Northern Rainforest)

The Great Bear Rainforest is the fabled region of towering trees and rare mammals that stretches up the rugged Pacific coast from the top of Vancouver Island to southern Alaska. It’s world-renowned for its biodiversity. A longtime resident of the area, award-winning photographer and conservationist Ian McAllister has made it his life’s work to document the Great Bear’s inhabitants. Over decades of scrambling through underbrush, sailing up the isolated coast, and exploring the region’s cold and mysterious waters, McAllister has captured stunning photographs of rarely observed wildlife along an awe-inspiring coastline.

In eloquent, evocative prose, McAllister portrays the rainforest’s rhythms. We meet Gitga’at elders from the small community of Hartley Bay, Heiltsuk engaged in the traditional herring roe fishery, and scientists devoted to studying the region’s fascinating return of humpback and fin whales. Yet, a number of mega-energy projects now threaten this coast like no other time in history, endangering the Great Bear’s traditional ways of life for humans and non-humans alike; Great Bear Wild shows in a visceral way what is at stake if these projects proceed. This is a deeply personal work, full of wisdom developed over a lifetime of observation.