Charlie Russell, a Canadian naturalist who researched grizzly bears by living among them and argued for a view of the animals based on coexistence rather than fear, died on May 7 in Calgary, Alberta. He was 76.

The cause was complications after surgery, his brother Gordon said.

Mr. Russell was outspoken in his belief that the view most people — including many of his fellow naturalists — held of the bear was wrong.

“I believe that it’s an intelligent, social animal that is completely misunderstood,” he said in a PBS “Nature” documentary about his work. To prove the point, he and his partner at the time, Maureen Enns, a photographer and artist, spent months each year for a decade living among bears in a remote part of eastern Russia.

They wrote several books based on those experiences and were the subject of documentaries and countless articles. Mr. Russell’s ideas, though, were not embraced by everyone.