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Experience bear viewing Alaska style
with Wildlife Trails. Alaska has long been considered the world's
premier bear viewing destination and our fully flexible, tailor
made wildlife tours offer the unique opportunity to come to face
to face with some of the largest Coastal Brown Bears on the the
planet, as well as their inland/alpine cousin the Grizzly Bear,
and the resourceful and ubiquitous Black Bear. Whereas in most
other North American location bear viewing is conducted from an
elevated 
viewing
platform or hide, bear viewing in Alaska is generally conducted
on foot, in small groups (e.g. maximum 6 people), and in the company
of expert guides.
A visit to Katmai National Park offers perhaps the best bear viewing Alaska has to offer, and nowehere else in the world can you safely view Coastal Brown Bears in such close proximity, or in such numbers. In Katma NP it is possible to sit quietly while giant Coastal Brown Bears catch salmon or graze on estuarine sedge grasses only yards away. While organised bear viewing is in its infancy elsewhere in North America, it has been carefully developed here for more than 2 decades so the bears have become accustomed to human observers and no longer see them as a threat. Bear hunting has also been outlawed in Katmai since its inception as a National Park, and the Katmai bears are the largest protected population of brown bears anywhere in the world.
Katmai NP is accessed by floatplane or wheeled bushplane from the Kenai Peninsula or from Kodiak Island, itself a legendary bear viewing location, home to arguably the biggest of the Alaska bears, the near mythical Kodiak Bear. If you would also like to see Alpine Grizzly Bears then a visit to world famous Denali National Park is highly recommended.
While it is often said that everything
is bigger in America, in Alaska it is quantifiably true. As well
as the biggest bears, the Alaska/Yukon Moose is the biggest of
its ilk, and Alaska is also home Mount McKinley, at a staggering
20,320 feet (6,177 meters), the tallest mountain in North America.
Alaska encompasses an incredible diversity of habitat from temperate
rainforest and taiga forest, to alpine and arctic tundra. This
diversity is reflected in its terrestrial wildlife
which includes Coastal Brown Bears, Grizzly Bears, Black Bears,
Polar Bears, Wolves, Wolverines, Artic Foxes, Lynx, Moose, Caribou,
Mountain Goats, Snowshoe Hare, Pica, Arctic Ground Squirrels.
It also offers outstanding birding opportunities with Bald Eagle,
Golden Eagle, Gyrfalcon, Peregrine Falcon, Horned Puffin, Tufted
Puffin, Storm Petrel, and Parakeet Auklet just a few of the species
that can be seen here.
Surrounded on 3 sides by the Pacific Ocean and Bering, Chukchi & Beaufort Seas, Alaska's coastal waters are also incredibly rich and are home to Sea Otters, Seals, Steller Sea Lions, Walrus, Minke Whales, and Orcas. They also play host to visiting giants including Humpback Whales, Fin Whales, and Bowhead Whales. Alaska also has some of the most important seabird nesting sites in North America. Many are on isolate rocky islands where in the absence of mammal predators, the birds can nest safely on the ground or in burrows.
Whether you want to enjoy up close and
personal encounters with Coastal Brown Bears in Katmai
National Park or on Kodiak Island,
see Alaska's "Big 5" (Grizzly Bear, Wolf, Moose, Caribou,
and Dall Sheep) and the splendour of Mount McKinley in Denali
National Park, or see Sea Otters nurse their pups, Humpback
Whales breach, and Glaciers calve in the rugged fjords of the
Kenai Peninsula, let Wildlife Trails
introduce to the sheer exhilaration of bear viewing Alaska style.
Whatever your interests we can arrange a tour that is perfect
for you, combining the very best bear viewing Alaska has to offer,
as well as whale watching, scenery, and cultural experiences.
Please visit our main website www.wildlifetrails.co.uk
to find out more about our fully flexible wildlife tours in Alaska
and worldwide
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