Jetboat tour captain Jono Greene spotted a white bear cub Saturday, Aug. 7 while guiding about two miles upriver from Wells Bridge.
Greene was giving a tour to 18 cruise passengers about 3:30 p.m. when he saw a black dot at a place known as “Bear Slide.” The avalanche chute is an interesting spot where green brush grows from soil on top of a year-round snowpack.
“I like to point it out because it’s an anomaly, though I never saw a bear there,” Greene said. Through binoculars he could see the dot was a black bear, then after moving the boat closer, he saw a smaller, white animal walking along side it.
“First my brain says, ‘It’s a fox.’ Then, ‘It’s a dog.’ My brain would not process what my eyes were looking at.” It was a white bear, and not a blonde one, either, he said.
“I’ve seen a lot of blonde brown bears. It was definitely not blonde. It was white like a polar bear cub,” but with a black bear cub’s shape, he said. The cub looked healthy and looked to weigh between 35 and 60 pounds.
Greene pulled his boat within about 250 feet of the bears, which were grazing on vegetation, moving up the slope.
“They weren’t in the least spooked or concerned. They didn’t even look at us,” he said. He and his clients were able to watch the bear about 10 minutes before it moved out of view.
About a dozen clients snapped photos that company owner Don “Duck” Hess reviewed. Hess said he’s never seen anything like the white bear in 45 years on the river. “To my knowledge, no one’s ever seen that in the valley.”
Guide Greene said his boat was the only jetboat tour that day, and he’s feeling lucky. “It was something. To me, it was special, like a Spirit Bear. My cuts didn’t heal or anything, but it was special.”
After reviewing photos, Fish and Game wildlife biologist Ryan Scott said the bear appeared to be a light-colored black bear or “glacier bear,” which also are sometimes colored blue or gray.
Dark coloring around the bear’s eyes suggests it’s not an albino, Scott said. “It’s a beautiful bear. It’s exciting to see the color phase. I’d encourage people to enjoy viewing it.”
But Scott said until he sees the animal alive, he won’t commit to describing its color. “In terms of it being a white bear, I don’t know if it is or isn’t based on photographs.”
The distinction between “white” and “light colored” is critical. Light-colored glacier bears are rare but spotted occasionally around Lynn Canal. After several years of sightings, one was taken by a hunter in Skagway in 2008, despite town efforts to save it, including passage of a Fish and Game regulation in 2007 that “white-colored black bears” are not legal for harvest in game unit 1D.
State wildlife enforcement officers found that the harvested bear was multi-colored, and didn’t match the “white” description of bears protected by the regulation.
Skagway residents decried the decision, saying the bear was always cream colored. They said the regulation should have barred taking “white- phase black bears,” which is what they originally sought.
The glacier bear also is the mascot of Haines schools, though it is generally portrayed as green.
“Spirit bear” generally refers to kermode bears, a subspecies of black bear found in British Columbia. About 10 percent of kermode bears have white or cream-colored coats.
Tour operator Hess said he wouldn’t favor protection of the bear Greene saw. “To me, it’s just another bear that happens to be white.”