Canada's Wilderness: Wild Areas, Routes, and Wildlife of the North

Canada holds roughly 9% of the world's freshwater, 25% of its wetlands, and the largest intact boreal forest remaining on Earth. These numbers have become so familiar that they risk losing their weight. To understand what they mean in practice, one needs to stand at the edge of a unnamed lake in the Yukon interior and realize that the watershed draining into it has never been mapped at the scale of a footprint.

This guide covers the major wilderness regions of Canada: the ecology, wildlife, access logistics, and conservation context of each area. It is intended for travellers, naturalists, wildlife enthusiasts, and anyone planning a journey into Canada's less-visited wild country. For readers interested in grizzly bears specifically, the Grizzly Bears journal covers this species in depth. For safety guidance specific to bear country, see the Bear Safety guide.

The Great Bear Rainforest

The Great Bear Rainforest spans the central and north coast of British Columbia — a 6.4 million hectare stretch of temperate rainforest, fjords, islands, and salmon rivers that remains one of the largest intact temperate rainforests in the world. A landmark 2016 land use order provided formal legal protection to 85% of the region and established a framework for ecosystem-based management across the remainder in partnership with First Nations.

The rainforest's most famous inhabitant is the Kermode or spirit bear — a cream or white-coloured form of the black bear found on specific islands and adjacent mainland areas. Genetic research has shown that the white colouration, produced by a recessive variant of the MC1R gene, is maintained in island populations at much higher rates than on the mainland — up to 20–30% white bears in some populations. The trait may confer a foraging advantage when fishing salmon in daylight.

Grizzly bears are also abundant throughout the Great Bear Rainforest, reaching their highest densities around the salmon rivers and estuary systems of the coast. Knight Inlet and the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary, north of Prince Rupert, are the primary ecotourism sites for grizzly viewing.

Yukon Wilderness

The Yukon contains approximately 482,000 km² of land of which roughly 20% is formally protected — primarily through Kluane National Park and Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to one of the world's largest non-polar ice fields. Beyond the parks, vast stretches of the Yukon remain in a condition of ecological completeness rarely found elsewhere on Earth.

Grizzly bears are abundant and highly visible in the Yukon compared to most of their range farther south, partly because human presence is minimal and partly because the tundra and alpine terrain provides open sightlines. Dall sheep occupy the rocky ridges; moose move through valley willow thickets; wolves travel in family groups across the open terrain; caribou herds undertake some of the longest overland migrations of any terrestrial mammal.

Rocky Mountain Wilderness Corridors

The mountain parks of Alberta and British Columbia — Banff, Jasper, Yoho, Kootenay, and their provincial park neighbours — form the core of the southern Rocky Mountain protected area network. But between these parks lie critical unprotected corridors: the Bow Valley west of Canmore, the Crowsnest Pass region, the Willmore Wilderness north of Jasper, and the varied provincial lands along the eastern slopes of the Rockies.

Grizzly bears, wolves, wolverines, and mountain caribou require these corridors to move between the protected core areas. The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative has identified the primary connectivity pinch-points and is working with governments, Indigenous communities, and private landowners to maintain passable linkages through an otherwise fragmented landscape. See the National Parks guide for detailed coverage of individual parks in this corridor.

Frequently Asked Questions