SPIRIT OF THE GREAT BEAR

Cover of a book titled "Spirit of the Great Bear" by Jack Plant with a foreword by paul nicklen, with an image of a forest featuring tall trees and a bear cub standing among the greenery.
Spirit of the Great Bear book by Jack Plant foreword by Paul Nicklen
A killer whale surfacing in calm gloomy ocean water with a visible blowhole spray and a dark overcast sky in the background.
Two crows perched on a dead, leafless hemlock tree branch against a plain white background.

A striking collection of 90 photographs depicting the rugged grandeur of the Northwest Coast’s Great Bear Rainforest.

  • Hardcover

  • 9 × 11 inches

  • 224 pages

  • $60 CAD / $50 USD

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Book Description

Spirit of the Great Bear is an immersive journey through the vast wilderness habitat of the spirit bear, the rare white-furred variant of Kermode bears that has long featured in First Nations oral traditions. While much of Great Bear Rainforest is protected—it is the largest intact coastal temperate rainforest on Earth—today there are as few as 100 of the bears remaining, making it one of the world’s rarest animals.

Wildlife photographer and conservationist Jack Plant has spent the last decade exploring the rainforest in search of spirit bears and documenting the natural beauty of this coastal habitat, relying heavily on the guidance and traditional knowledge generously shared by the First Nations communities who have protected the region for thousands of years. Plant was adopted by Hereditary Chief Charlie Mason of Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation in the community of Klemtu.

Spirit of the Great Bear features photographic accounts of Plant’s wild and memorable encounters with the white bears, as well as with other extraordinary species found in the Great Bear Rainforest, including grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, orcas, and humpback whales.

The book examines the natural and human-caused threats to the rich biodiversity of the Rainforest while highlighting the substantial progress Indigenous leaders and conservationists have made to protect one of the most biodiverse landscapes in the world. It’s both a celebration of the spirit bear’s resilience and its wilderness home, and an urgent reminder of the need to protect this special and vulnerable ecosystem.

“This book is a celebration of both the most enigmatic and elusive species on our planet and its fragile wilderness home. It serves as a reminder of the rainforest’s vulnerability, highlighting the substantial progress conservationists and Indigenous leaders have made to protect one of the most biodiverse landscapes in the world.”

- Jack Plant

A collage of three nature scenes: a wolf on rocky ground in a forest, a black bird perched on a stick with a colorful background, and a whale breaching the water.