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| WildWatch's Bearadise Excursions & Expeditions |
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| WildWatch "Making good conservation good business" [email protected] Ph/Fax (907) 260-9059 (Office) 39200 Alma Ave. Soldotna, AK 99669 |
Alaska – there’s no better place in the world to see bears. Grizzly bears, black bears, and polar bears. And
there’s no better way to see bears than in the company of world renown Master Naturalist Guide and bear
ecologist Dr. Stephen Stringham – author of numerous books and featured in TV documentaries such as
National Geographic.
Better known to his closest friends as Laughing Bear, Steve has enjoyed more fantastic adventures than
most people could crowd into a hundred lifetimes – unless he’s there to guide them.
Are you hungry for experiences that you’ll still be raving about decades from now when your hair has turned
as white as the snows blanketing Mt. Denali? If so, join Steve for a few days in Bearadise.
You may have seen bears in zoos. But have you ever been splashed by a grizzly sprinting through a
stream chasing salmon, or been forced to jump aside as two playful cubs try to include you in their games?
Have you ever had a mother bear lay down to nurse her cubs so close by that you could hear the throb of
their contented purrs? At Bearadise you can.
Have you flown above steaming volcanoes, born of erupting lava and carved by ice into titanic cloud-ripping
teeth? Have you hovered in the sky above such fangs of stone, then swooped downwards, following ancient
frozen rivers as they plunged in slow motion thousands of feet to storm-battered sea shores? At Bearadise,
you can.
Most people can just dream of such experiences. At Bearadise, dreams become realities. Steve is a master
of taming potentially dangerous situations to provide thrilling, life transforming experiences, at minimum risk.
He’s had far more than 12,000 close encounters, sometimes alone, sometimes with students or recreational
viewers; yet no one on his excursions has ever been injured by a wild animal or in any other way.
Of course, wilderness adventures don’t all come racing at you, one right after another, with the speed of
stampeding caribou herd or a Hollywood action flick. But they do come, if you are in the right places, at the
right times, with the right attitude and plenty of patience.
Even the spaces between your own adventures won’t be boring. For decades, Steve has enchanted
audiences with stories of encounters with grizzly and black bears, wolves and foxes, moose and caribou,
mountain goats and sheep, whales and dolphins, and other wildlife, as well as his years of living with Native
Americans.
Even before you join Steve in Bearadise, you can preview his stories by reading Beauty Within the Beast
about how he and Alatanna mentored three orphaned bear cubs in the Alaska wilderness. In the not too
distance future, you’ll also be able to read its sequel Grizzlies, Glaciers and Gold.
Sharing Steve’s adventures isn’t just entertainment. It’s an education – as much of one as you like. For
folks starving to really learn about bears and their ecosystems, we offer courses on bear behavior and
ecology. Even our college-level courses are open to people of any age. The first part of each can be taken
online; see http://www.bear-viewing-in-alaska.info/Field_Classes.html. The second part is taught in the field
on the coast of the Alaska Peninsula or Cook Inlet.
Spending a few days in the Alaskan wilderness with Dr. Stringham and his colleagues can teach you more
about wildlife and wild lands than you could learn during years in a classroom. School teaches you about
life. At Bearadise, you experience life in ways that can change you forever.
Perhaps the most profound change, for many people, is the transformation from fear to fascination with
bears. Fascination is sometimes followed by concern for how seriously bears and wolves are suffering from
Alaska’s Predator Holocaust program, designed to decimate large carnivores wherever they compete with
human hunters for moose, caribou or other hoofstock.
If you share our concerns, you’ll be happy to know that a portion of all profits from WildWatch expeditions
and excursions to Bearadise and other sites are used to fund research and education which support
conservation of at-risk bears in Alaska, California, Nevada, and other crisis habitats.
If taking a course doesn’t satisfy your hunger, you might consider applying to serve as a research intern
assisting Dr. Stringham’s team. It could be a great way for students in college or even high school to
jumpstart their own careers. Interns will be offered subprojects which they might be able to use for a Senior
Thesis or even as the seed for graduate school research.
In order to maximize the quality of our expeditions, they are usually limited to just a handful of clients – e.g.,
a single family or 3 or 4 students with a chaperone.
Detailed information about WildWatch excursions and expeditions can be found on elsewhere on this
website. Just click on the Field Courses tab at the top of this page. Or write us at gobearviewing@hotmail.
com.
| Alaska May Not Be Paradise, but It Is Bearadise |
