Natural World

Ever since I can remember, I've been drawn to wild places.

I guess it's really how my interest in bears started.

To me, bears, more than any other creature, represent wilderness.

And more than that - wildness itself.

Brown bears once roamed across Europe and North America

but today they're found

in just a few small pockets of really wild land.

Alaska is one of the bears' last strongholds.

My name is Chris Morgan.

I've dedicated half my life to the study and conservation of bears.

This remote stretch of coastal Alaska

is like nowhere else on Earth.

In most places, bears keep a healthy distance from each other

but these bears have somehow learned to live with one another.

Left alone, it has become a city of bears.

I'll follow these bears through an entire season.

From spring to autumn.

Piece together their complex social lives

and find out how these colossal giants manage to live together.

The first thing this young male does when the big fellow leaves,

starts putting on a show for the ladies!

You've got to be tough to survive here.

It's a land like no other.

It's grizzly country.

You know, I grew up in St Anne's in Lancashire

and to me, Alaska was this far-off wild place.

Somewhere at the ends of the Earth.

But the first time I took flight over this country

I was blown away by the size of the place.

To me, it takes an animal as wild as a bear to call Alaska home.

Just looks and feels like bear country out there.

Vast and wild.

No way! Oh, wow! Look at that!

Wow! Two bears. Play fighting.

It's early June and bears are beginning to gather

in the lush meadows.

You can imagine the sense of joy they must feel

after being cooped up in their dark den for the past six months.

I can't believe we're here. It's...

I love it, I love this place.

It feels just so right to be here

and I'm so dying to see what the bears are up to,

especially this early in the season.

I've never been here this early before so it's completely new to me.

'For the next several months, film-maker Joe Pontecorvo

'and I will be living among bears.'

Think we've got enough stuff?

Looks like we're going to be here for a year!

We are deep inside grizzly country,

in a place known to have

the largest concentrations of brown bears in the world.

BIRD CRIES

I've always wanted to spend a season living among brown bears.

Watching their daily lives unfold.

But it's also a somewhat unsettling feeling

to be surrounded by so many bears.

WE are the visitors here.

It's like we're rigging a demolition scene!

Some kinds of explosives!

Hey, that's not a bad idea!

I've got a much smaller camp than Joe.

He's got all the gear within his electric fence

so it's pretty sizeable.

Whereas mine, I just need a tent and a few of my personal belongings.

And of course, all the food goes in Joe's camp as well!

There is this complete sense of isolation in coastal Alaska.

You feel, genuinely, like you're the first person

to set foot right here.

The first person to sit on this log.

And, you know, there are tracks going off

down this ridge of rocks here.

And it looks like a human set of footprints but it's not.

It's bear tracks.

Every inch of this has been influenced by the bears

and the wolves that call it home.

The sun is up most of the time.

Even now, it's not that late yet, it's ten o'clock at night,

and we've got several hours of light to work in if we want to.

It's tough to go to bed

because there's something happening all the time.

Don't drop that camera, Joe.

Many thousands of years ago,

the whole of North America was wild enough for large carnivores.

This is the front right track of a large male.

But now we only find the huge carnivores

in small pockets of really wild land,

in places like Alaska.

Stop, stop.

(There's a sleeping bear.

(We don't want to surprise him. Back up.

But if you've got a sleeping bear like that,

you certainly don't want to surprise him.

If he was to wake up from a deep sleep surprised like that,

they could quickly turn.

It's like sleeping in your motel room

and someone breaking the door down and enter your room.

What would you do? You'd go into that fight response.

We'll cross the river and avoid him.

Hey there, bear.

The bears I normally see fattening up for winter

are at the beginning of their season.

And the salmon run is still months away.

Bears have lost nearly 50% of their body weight over the winter

and they are eager to get it back.

What they are looking for, smelling for actually, are tiny razor clams.

Once they find one, they start digging with those massive claws.

It's not much of a meal.

But this time of year, they'll take whatever they can get.

This is unbelievable. There's a female here with two tiny cubs.

They probably weigh less than 10 pounds.

I've never seen any this small before.

These cubs were only born in January in the den

and they've probably only been out of the den

for about three weeks since mid-May.

Can you imagine the sensory overload

these cubs are going through right now?

They're playing with things, discovering the world around them.

One of them is playing with a piece of grass there.

A year from now,

they'll start to wander a little bit further from her.

And right now they're sticking to her like glue.

They don't want to let her out of sight

and she doesn't want them out of sight.

There's a lot of big, feisty, testosterone-driven males right now.

One of these cubs would make a very easy, tasty snack for them.

And I really hope that she keeps them safe.

Mating season lasts just two months.

But during that time, bears from all around

gather in the lush meadow below.

It's a dangerous time for a mum with young cubs.

But experience has taught her well.

The bluff provides both sanctuary and a view of her surroundings.

With this many big males around,

she's got to have her wits about her the whole time.

This swagger, we call it the cowboy walk.

He's really doing two things here, trying to impress the female...

..but it's trying to make themselves feel as big as possible

and look as big as possible to the other bears - their competitors.

Now, he's a real cowboy. A big, brutish-looking guy.

Everyone is keeping a close eye on Brutus.

Look at him salivating.

When these big males get worked up, they'll start salivating like this.

This unbelievable.

This big, brutish male - he's being super-aggressive.

BEAR GROWLS

It's a pretty gutsy move to walk up on a mating pair like this.

BEAR GROWLS

BEARS GROWL

Brutus pushed the older male right off the young female.

I don't think grandpa is willing to risk his life over this one female.

The look on the face on grandpa.

He just looks so forlorn.

Now Brutus is stomping his scent into the ground...

erasing all traces of grandpa from the meadow.

Stomping him out of existence.

The males here will try and mate with as many females as possible.

While the females are looking for the biggest,

the most dominant male around.

That'll give her cubs the best chance of survival.

There's another guy coming in from behind her.

He doesn't look big enough to take on the big guy.

Looks like he's going to give it a shot, though.

Wow, this female is getting a lot of attention.

Four males around her right now.

It's almost like she's insignificant, you know.

The males are fighting among themselves

and the winner gets to take her home.

LOUD GROWL

They are two feet away from these massive giants

and they're clashing in a big, aggressive fight.

These females are assessing the males.

He's definitely at the peak of his game right now.

All the other males can do is sit around watching.

Then the female goes home with the winner.

And that's why all of the males around here

are at least twice as big as the females.

That's because the big guys win the fights and they get to breed.

A quiet calm returns to the meadow.

And life resumes as if nothing had happened at all.

But these cubs are lucky. She knows how to rear them.

In a place where there are these threats for them to be aware of.

She's a good mum. I've decided to call her Nadie, which means "wise".

These cubs learn so much every day.

What's good to eat, what bears to avoid, how to be safe.

And by following mum,

they'll learn what it takes to survive in this busy city of bears.

WOLF HOWLS

I just came over the rise to go back into the tent

after being out on a walk and there's a bear right here.

He's about 30 feet from my tent right now.

A moment ago...

Oh, hello! Hey, bear, it's OK.

You are a big fella, I know.

You think you can go anywhere you like, don't you.

And you probably can!

He's right between Joe's tent, which is here, and my tent.

Our tents are about 30 yards apart and he's in-between them.

Joe was on the other side of the tent at the time.

I was afraid he might touch his nose to that electric fence

and bolt in the opposite direction and run Joe over in the process.