With the awarding of a $5.3 million contract, the National Park Service plans to ease access to one of its premier Alaska attractions next year — the salmon-snacking brown bears that crowd Brooks River in Katmai National Park much of the summer.

A 300-foot bridge will replace an aging floating bridge that needed to be installed and removed every year at a cost of about $12,000. Two 800-square-foot viewing platforms — one on each side of the bridge — will also be added.

Occasionally, bears sat on the floating bridge or blocked the path to it, said John Quinley of the Park Service, and the elevated bridge should eliminate that problem.

"The floating bridge itself changes how the red salmon move through," he added. "They've been pooling up below the bridge. Now the fish will move through in a more natural way."

STG Inc. of Anchorage, a subsidiary of the Calista Corp. that specializes in rural Alaska construction projects, expects to start work next fall after Brooks Camp is closed and finish before the 2018 visitor season.

Premier bear-viewing site

The remote 4-million-acre Katmai park sees about 38,000 visitors a year, with some 15,000 stopping at Brooks River, Quinley said. Virtually all fly in.

About 2,200 brown bears live in Katmai, with the river considered one of Alaska's top bear-viewing sites. "It's the most important bear sanctuary in the country, perhaps the world," said Jack Hession, the Sierra Club's Alaska representative for more than 30 years.

Peak viewing opportunities are in July and September, when bears fish along the river and large numbers gather at Brooks Falls, which offers excellent fishing prospects — and first-rate photo opportunities.

"I've been following this one for many years, and I do have real problems with what Park Service is doing," said Hession, who's visited Katmai numerous times. "The combination of building the bridge and maintaining operations of the Brooks Camp and floatplane landing instead of moving those facilities off the north side of the river … is detrimental to the bears who use the area and visitors who routinely encounter bears moving back and forth to the river."

"Bears … can be turned away or harassed by park rangers if they get too close to visitors."

There's never been a bear mauling or death at the Brooks site.

‘Bear jams’

But there have been what Hession calls "bear jams," when bears in the lower river climb on the floating bridge.

"People backed up on both sides of the river, sometimes for hours," Hession said. "They'd miss their flight connections and it's very inconvenient. The bridge ends the bear jams."

Ray Bane, a former Katmai superintendent, and Barrie Gilbert, an ecologist who has spent decades studying Katmai bears, said the bridge was part of an effort by the Park Service to transform the park into what Bane termed "a destination theme park."

"A stealth plan to expand development into bear habitat on both sides of Brooks River has quietly been hatched, turning prime bear habitat into a sacrifice area," Gilbert wrote in an opinion column published by National Parks Traveler. "The Park Service is abandoning the long-planned removal of visitor and park facilities from one side of the river, the heart of essential bear habitat. Only moneyed interests will be happy."

Bane, who managed the park in the late 1980s, said the Park Service has rebuffed calls for it to produce an official environmental impact statement for public review, which he considers essential because the plan alters Katmai's development plan.

"This project is not based on sound scientific research or sincere concern for the welfare of affected natural and cultural resources," he said, according to National Parks Traveler. "It is political."

But Jim Adams, Alaska director of the National Parks Conservation Association, supports the Park Service plan.