Environmental Stewardship

Doing Our Part

Knight Inlet Lodge takes its corporate and environmental stewardship responsibilities seriously. As a large, remote, fly-in wildlife viewing lodge we are acutely aware of our environmental footprint. That is why we work hard to do the simple things like the 3Rs - reduce, reuse and recycle - as well as the more complex things like engaging in policy issues to advocate for sustainable fisheries and wildlife management policies.

We are proud and active supporters of the Wilderness Tourism Association of BC (WTA). The WTA is an industry association of nature-based tourism businesses who work cooperatively to ensure a sustainable industry.

Grizzly Bear Stewardship

Knight Inlet Lodge is a founding member of the Commercial Bear Viewing Association of British Columbia (CBVA). The CBVA is committed to ensuring a sustainable grizzly bear viewing industry in BC that respects the bears and their ecosystems. We are working unequivocally to ban the currently legal trophy hunting of grizzly bears in British Columbia. In the meantime, we have adopted innovative strategies of working with the hunting community to restrict trophy hunting in critical grizzly bear viewing habitat in coastal BC. We financially support key conservation groups both in the United States and Canada that work on behalf of the bears and their environment. Research and conservation are very important to Knight Inlet Lodge and are an ongoing commitment. If you'd like to learn more about how you can personally help in our campaign to stop the trophy hunting of grizzly bears in BC, click here.

In 2005, Knight Inlet Lodge, in partnership with Dr. Owen Nevin and the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom, began a long term population study of the grizzly bears of Knight Inlet. We successfully satellite collared a number of bears, allowing us the ability to track denning and range characteristics on our sub-population. We gathered data that will help policy makers in making sound land-use and wildlife management planning decisions for the region that take into account the importance of the grizzly bear to the area.

We realize that we operate in areas that are economically important to First Nations and industries such as logging and commercial fisheries. As a result we strive hard to be good corporate citizens and to work cooperatively with these industries and with First Nations.

Brown Bear Research Network

In 2014, Knight Inlet Lodge along with Dr. Melanie Clapham helped found the Brown Bear Research Network. The BBRN is a network of scientists and commercial bear-viewing operators, committed to the conservation of brown bears in British Columbia. Through industry-funding, they aim to increase the volume of independant research carried out on brown bears within the province, particularly within the Great Bear Rainforest. The aim is to foster new, innovative projects that address current conservation priorities for coastal brown bears. For more information on the Brown Bear Research Network

Fisheries Stewardship

The wild Pacific Salmon are the foundation upon which our business is built. Without the wild salmon we would have no grizzly bears. Every Spring grizzly bears come out of their dens and feed on sedge in the lush tidal flats of Knight Inlet. But it is the annual spectacle of millions of returning salmon that the bears are really waiting for. Come mid-August the bears enter a phase called hyperphagia, where they feast on salmon constantly, doing their best to pack on as many calories as they can in the short season before it is time to den again. The salmon not only nourish the bears but the forest as well as researchers have to come to understand that salmon carcasses play a key role in the fertilization of watersheds.

Realizing the importance of salmon to the bears and to the environment, Knight Inlet Lodge has embarked on ambitious support of several key initiatives aimed at ensuring long term viability of wild salmon in our local rivers. Direct expenditures of well in excess of $100,000 annually has been spent on juvenile salmon out migration studies, escapement monitoring and wild Coho enumeration. All of our work has been in partnership with and under the supervision of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the federal agency responsible for the sustainability of salmon stocks.