Spirit of the
Northern
Wild.

What The Grizzlar Covers

The Grizzlar is a reading site about North American wildlife and the country it lives in. Its material is organised into five journals — grizzly bears, national parks, wildlife photography, bear safety and Canadian wilderness — and each is written as a standing reference rather than a news feed, so the guides are meant to stay useful between visits instead of being replaced every week.

The five subjects are connected rather than parallel. A question that starts with an animal usually ends in a place, and a question that starts with a place usually ends in what to carry and how close to stand. The grizzly bear journal covers biology, behaviour and conservation; the national parks journal covers where those animals can actually be seen, in which valleys and in which months.

The bear safety journal handles the part that matters before anyone leaves the trailhead — food storage, canisters and hangs, spray selection and the protocols that go with them. The wildlife photography journal covers field craft from both directions: equipment, settings and autofocus behaviour on one side, and distance, disclosure and the limits of acceptable practice on the other. The Canadian wilderness journal covers the remote country itself, from the coastal temperate rainforest to the sub-Arctic north.

Inside each journal the individual guides go further than the overview. They set out specific locations, access routes, seasons and figures where the subject has them, and they link across to one another wherever a question crosses a boundary — the salmon-season article points to photographic distance, the habitat article points to the parks that protect the corridors between populations.

Readers arriving with a specific question are usually best served by going straight to the relevant journal listed below. Readers arriving without one can start anywhere, since every journal opens with an overview before its individual guides.