Bear webcam

Bear witness - Webcam in wilderness

Mary Pemberton Anchorage


Photograph: Al Grillo/AP

Only a lucky few humans are allowed each summer to get up close and personal with the McNeil river bears, but thanks to the wilderness equivalent of Big Brother, the animals are available to the world. A bearcam set up in the 46,300-hectare (114,400-acre) McNeil river state game sanctuary shows them brawling over salmon, cooling off in the falls, sunbathing on the rocks and fattening up for the long Alaskan winter.


The state holds a lottery to allow about 250 people each year to visit the sanctuary (above), 250 miles south-west of Anchorage, to view the brown bears. The camera allows the less lucky to get a look at ngm.com/wildcamgrizzlies.

The bearcam is on from 3pm to 9pm British time and can zoom in on where the animals are likely to be at any given hour. In the peak weeks the falls draw more brown bears than anywhere else in the world. While numbers have been decreasing in recent years, the bears still put on a good show. The record was 72 observed at one time in 1999.