Zeballos, B.C. \u2013 A juvenile grizzly bear was spotted dashing across the Zeballos Logging Road on northern Vancouver Island, B.C. at the end of September.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ehattesaht-Chinehkint councillor Ernie Smith saw the young brown bear with a large hump on its back about six of seven kilometres down the logging road off Highway 19.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were driving home and all of sudden this grizzly bear ran across the road in front of us. We got a quick little video of it, but it was really fast. The grizzly bear ran into the bush. It was very afraid of us,\u201d said Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe called conservation right away. They were glad it ran away so fast,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Grizzly bear sightings on the east coast of northern Vancouver Island are becoming more common. This summer, the Village of Sayward issued a public warning after a grizzly was sighted within the community in early May. Sayward is accessed by Highway 19, roughly four hours driving distance from Victoria.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2025, a wayward grizzly bear made Texada Island home after swimming to the island from Powell River. Texada Island is the largest of the Gulf Islands. The Texada grizzly was shot and killed illegally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kwakwa\u0331ka\u0331\u02bcwakw and Coast Salish wildlife photographer Tia Laughington has also been documenting a North Island grizzly family<\/a> for a few years. Her tribe\u2019s crest is the grizzly bear, and she grew up in Alert Bay learning \u2019N\u00e1mgis cultural traditions, which she says gave her a deep, ancestral relationship with these animals.<\/p>\n Laughington suspects that the young grizzly Smith saw is one \u201cvery adventurous\u201d, bold male in a litter of three cubs she witnessed get \u201cthe boot\u201d from their mother at the end of June. She said the grizzly cubs were born and raised right on Vancouver Island.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir mother was fairly small when she first gave birth to her three COY (cubs of the year), but as the seasons passed, she and the cubs gained an incredible amount of weight. Remarkably, all three cubs had a 100 per cent survival rate, which is extraordinarily rare and historic for Vancouver Island. For context, most coastal grizzly cubs in B.C. face a high mortality rate, with only about a 50 per cent survival rate in their first year,\u201d said Laughington in an email.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs these young bears disperse, they will have to look for specific habitats that are vastly different from what a black bear requires, especially for winter hibernation. For instance, coastal grizzlies will typically den on north-facing mountain slopes at a minimum elevation of 3,000 feet. They selectively choose these spots to reduce the risk of winter floods or avalanches, and to ensure deep snow cover for natural insulation,\u201d she continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n Smith shared that while he\u2019s seen grizzlies close to Sayward in the past, he\u2019s never spotted one that close to Ehattesaht-Chinehkint territory on Vancouver Island\u2019s northwest. The traditional territories of Ehattesaht-Chinehkint include Esperanza Inlet, Zeballos Inlet and part of Espinosa Inlet. Smith said the top of his territory is in the mountains, flowing towards \u2018Namgis territory, with boundaries meeting roughly around Mason\u2019s Falls.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of them moving over to the Island now. They are definitely coming over this way,\u201d said Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think in the old days there used to be grizzly bears here because Ehatis has a grizzly bear song. It\u2019s been in our nation for probably hundreds of years. The grizzly bear was probably here before contact; before colonizers came into our territory. They probably got hunted out, but they are slowly making their way back, I guess,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Nicholas Scapillati is the executive director of the Grizzly Bear Foundation, a Canadian charity dedicated to the welfare of grizzly bears across North America.\u00a0<\/p>\n Historically, western scientists have said there were never grizzly bears on Vancouver Island according to Scapillati.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBut I\u2019ve always been interested in the other side of the story; what do the nations on the Island say? A lot of the nations in the Broughton Archipelago, they have songs about grizzlies,\u201d said Scapillati, conceding that \u201cmaybe\u201d western science has it wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grizzlies are setting up shop on the Island because of the \u201cgreat habitat\u201d, including salmon streams and berries, said Scapillati.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGrizzly bears are very curious. They like to roam and they are great swimmers and they can travel great distances. Biologically they can expand their range,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A keystone species, Scapillati says grizzly bears have a big impact on an ecosystem and could help with recovering Vancouver Island terrain.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHaving grizzly bears on the Island means more salmon is going to get transported into the forest and the forest is going to get fertilized and produce bigger trees. They are going to cultivate the alpine because they love glacier lilies. They are going to eat 200,000 huckleberries in a day and then poop that out back into the landscape and basically creating massive habitats with berry fertilizer,\u201d he shared.<\/p>\n Grizzly bear hybrids<\/p>\n While there are several incidences of grizzly bears mating with polar bears in the Arctic, producing hybrid offspring called \u2018grolars\u2019 or \u2018pizzly\u2019 bears, Scapillati says grizzlies can not mate with black bears.<\/p>\n \u201cThey predate on black bears. There are no reports of grizzlies mating with black bears,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n He says since we don\u2019t know how many grizzlies live on Vancouver Island, it\u2019s hard to tell what sort of long-term presence they will have.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey are the slowest reproducing land mammal in North America other than the muskox,\u201d Scapillati continued. \u201cIt takes them a long time between babies. Young ones stay with them for two to three years. The population grows very slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n The provincial government ended the grizzly bear hunt<\/a> in 2017, but in some parts of British Columbia Scapillati says hunters haven\u2019t been able to kill a grizzly since the 1960s.<\/p>\n There are an estimated 15,000 grizzly bears in British Columbia, according to government records.\u00a0<\/p>\n Smith thinks the grizzly he saw was probably headed to wherever the fish are.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe were kind of worried he was coming this way because they are dangerous, but then again, I wouldn\u2019t want to see anyone hunt it. There aren\u2019t too many of them here,\u201d said Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n Scapillati points out that a lot of the fear and misunderstanding tied to grizzly bears comes from folklore and myths perpetrated by Hollywood.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople shouldn\u2019t be afraid of grizzlies because you already have the skills on how to be safe and how to co-exist if you live with black bears,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at Indigenous stories and myths, the fear doesn\u2019t exist. The western culture has made people afraid,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n Mike Willie is the founder of Sea Wolf Adventures, an Indigenous-owned and operated ecotourism company based in Port McNeill and Kwakwaka\u2019wakw territory. In a blog post<\/a>, Willie explains how Indigenous knowledge shapes every wildlife encounter with Sea Wolf Adventures:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn Kwakwaka\u2019wakw culture, the grizzly bear holds a place of profound respect. The bear is not merely an animal to be observed; it is a being whose strength, patience, and seasonal rhythms carry teachings that apply to human life. To witness a grizzly in its territory is to receive something; it is not a transaction but a gift,\u201d Willie writes.\u00a0<\/p>\n A grizzly query directed to the B.C. Conservation Officer Service could not be returned due to the ongoing provincial election campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n