Save the Spirit Bear Coast! A Tar Sands Pipeline and Oil Tanker Traffic Now Endanger Some of the World's Very Last Spirit Bears.

Call on Premier Clark to Block the Northern Gateway Tar Sands Pipeline

VIDEO Big Oil Threatens the Spirit Bear Coast

The Spirit Bear with it's cream colored coat lives in a primeval wilderness that once stretched from Canada to California. This beautiful land is filled with towering thousand-year-old trees and salmon-filled rivers. The coastal waters surrounding this land are home to orcas, humpbacks, fin whales and Steller sea lions.The Native people who live here have also depended on this rich ecosystem for their way of life for thousands of years. If the Northern Gateway pipeline is built it would bring tar sands oil and supertankers into this unspoiled paradise. An oil spill could destroy the Spirit Bear Coast in a matter of days and would prove to be catastrophic for all those who live there.Please take a minute to sign the petition below to tell British Columbia's Premier, Christy Clark, that the environmental risks outweigh the benefits of this pipeline, and to take a definitive stand against this disastrous project.The Kermode bear (Ursus americanus kermodei, pron. kerr-MO-dee), also known as a "Spirit Bear" (particularly to the Native tribes of British Columbia), is a subspecies of the American Black Bear living in the central and north coast of British Columbia, Canada. It is noted for about 1/10 of their population having white or cream-coloured coats. This color morph is due to recessive alleles common in the population. They are not albinos and not any more related to polar bears or the "blonde" brown bears of Alaska's "ABC Islands" than other members of their species.National Geographic estimates the Spirit Bear population at 400-1000 individuals, saying that "the Spirit Bear may owe its survival to the protective traditions of the First Nations, who never hunted the animals or spoke of them to fur trappers".Because of their spirit-like appearance, "Spirit Bears" hold a prominent place in the oral stories of the Canadian First Nations and American Indians of the area. Scientists have found that black bears are not as effective at catching fish as white bears, as the white bears are less visible from the perspective of the fish. While at night the two colors of bears have similar success rates at catching fish, such as salmon, during the day the white bears are 30% more effective.The Kermode bear was named after Francis Kermode, former director of the Royal B.C. Museum, who researched the subspecies and a colleague of William Hornaday, the zoologist who described it. Source ~ Wikipedia