BEAR VIEWING
Did you know that we have the highest concentration of brown bears on Kodiak Island? The Kodiak Brown Bear Center & Lodge offers a unique and personal Alaskan Brown Bear viewing experience without boardwalks or large groups of tourists. To learn about the other amazing wildlife you can see, visit:
The entire northern half of Karluk Lake and lands adjacent to the Karluk River- around 112,000 acres- are owned and managed by Koniag, an Alaska Native owned corporation and the parent company of the KBBC. There are no roads or private cabins on these lands. When you are our guest, you have exclusive and proprietary access, so you can enjoy the bears and other animals in their natural setting with minimal human interference. Koniag’s lands are surrounded by the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, and our only neighbors are Refuge managers and researchers who occasionally fly in.
“If you respect the bear,
the bear will respect you.”
THE KARLUK BASIN is the ancestral home of the Alutiiq people, and the place where direct relatives of many of our staff lived and gathered from the land for the past 7,000 years. We feel this place is sacred and deserves our utmost respect and care. An old Alutiiq saying teaches us that “if you respect the bear, the bear will respect you”. Koniag’s core values require that we be good stewards of this important resource, and we do everything we can to minimize adverse impacts on the land and animals.
We limit group size to a maximum of 8 people to reduce our footprint.
When we are in the field, we strive to quietly follow trails in groups, so that we do not startle the bears.
We will not “push” bears for a better look or photo, and will leave an area just as carefully as we entered it.