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The Great Bear Rainforest is the best place to view the white form of the Black Bear, the so called Spirit or Ghost bear. It is not an albino and is due to the bear carrying two receive genes. Therefore a black female can have either white or black cubs and a white female may have either black or white cubs depending on if the male is carrying a recessive white gene. It is thought that as the population in the Rainforest is isolated from other Black Bears, the white recessive gene is not diluted and results in about one in ten black bears being white. We were fortunate to have three sightings of a white bear. Two were almost certainly the same bear on different days and one was of a previously unknown white bear that came within 10 yards of us on a trail and immediately turned round and disappeared into the forest. The images here are certainly not the best ever taken of a Spirit Bear but we felt they are good enough to show and it certainly put the icing on an excellent trip.
SPIRIT BEAR
SPIRIT BEAR1
SPIRIT BEAR2
SPIRIT BEAR3
GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST
ISLAND ODYSSEY YACHT EARLY MORNING
ISLAND ODYSSEY WHEN IT WASN'T RAINING
MUSSEL BAY GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST