Winter covers the Great Bear Rainforest in a white blanket of snow. Long cold winters are rare in the temperate rainforest because the climate is moderated by the ocean, and the ocean stays a relatively constant temperature.
Winter covers the Great Bear Rainforest in a white blanket of snow. Long cold winters are rare in the temperate rainforest because the climate is moderated by the ocean, and the ocean stays a relatively constant temperature.
Winter Again
As October turns into November, it’s time for the bears of the Great Bear Rainforest to go to sleep again. Many will return to the same dens they used the previous winter. A few will build new ones. But after seven months of roaming around a vast rainforest, they will now spend the next five in a space not much bigger than the inside of a hollow tree. There will be just enough room for an adult bear to get up and turn around and perhaps for cubs to stretch their still-growing legs. But that’s all the room they’ll need, since they’ll spend most of those five months snoozing and snoring.
Outside, winter will begin to take over the coast, and for a bear that means few opportunities for food. This is why bears evolved to spend the winter asleep. At the ocean’s edge it will rain and hail and sleet. Occasionally it will get cold enough for snow. Then the ground will change from its usual brown and green to white, and the rainforest will be beautiful in a whole new way, like a scene on a Christmas card. It will be dark too. Towards the end of the year the days will be only a few hours long, and what little light there is will be faint, like a flame that’s about to go out.
When winter sets in, all rainforest bears should be safely tucked away in their high-elevation dens, ready to sleep away the long, dark and cold months ahead.
In just a few weeks this little cub, already wearing his winter coat, will join his mother and return to the den he was born in high above the forest’s rivers.
Bears build their dens up in the mountains, 300 meters (1,000 feet) high or higher, and up there it snows all winter long. Little by little, as November becomes December, and December becomes January, it deepens and deepens so that eventually the bears’ dens will vanish under a thick carpet of white. Bears count on this deep layer of snow to keep their dens warm and private—like secret igloos buried under a rainforest.
When they enter their dens, rainforest bears are a third heavier than they were in spring. Their scrawn has turned to brawn thanks to the hundreds of delicious meals they enjoyed in the spring, summer and fall. All the plants and nuts and bugs and berries and, most of all, salmon they feasted on have made them fat. Good thing too, because they will live off this fat until March. In fact, they often won’t eat another bite until spring.
But if you think winter is a dead time for bears, think again. Remember, winter is when bears are born. They mate in late spring or early summer, but it’s in winter when mother bears, holed up in their dens under thick snowy blankets, give birth to their cubs. That’s why winter is so hard on them. Not only do they use up all the fat they stored feeding themselves, but they also have to use it to produce milk to feed their cubs. Normally bears have two cubs, but if they’re weak or if the food supply the previous year was meager, they may have only one. On the other hand, if the salmon run was especially rich and the berries especially plentiful, they may have three or even, very occasionally, four. But even one cub requires a lot of milk to survive a winter.
But survive they will, on sleep and the promise of another spring. Next March when the snow outside their den doors melts and the rainforest plants start to grow, the bears of the Great Bear Rainforest will make their way into the world again, just as countless generations of bears have done before them. They’ve been the luckiest bears on Earth.
Typical grizzly bear den excavated under the base of a western red cedar tree. Bears often choose to build their dens under the protection of an old tree like this one because it not only protects them from winter avalanches but also helps keep them dry in case it gets warm and rains.