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December 2008 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: The year of getting closer Feature: Hungry as a bear Feature: Plight of the bumblebee Feature: The messenger The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte

If all the bears in Canada were to disappear in the next decade, most urban dwellers would barely notice and many rural residents would be relieved. No more of the big predators haunting hiking trails, no more backyard-trash scavengers frightening dogs and children, no more bruins ambling across golf courses and parks. A number of European countries have driven their bears to extinction, and their ecological commons haven’t collapsed. So why should we care about the plight of our top-of-the-food-chain mammals? It’s not as if bears make our lives easier.

Since 1930, Canadian Geographic writers and photographers have been answering that question with their stories and photos. In this issue, veteran wildlife photographer Stephen J. Krasemann takes readers into his observation post in a clump of willows along the Yukon’s Fishing Branch, a tributary of the Porcupine River. He returned over three seasons to photograph grizzlies feeding on salmon, bulking up before retiring to nearby hibernation caves for a winter’s repose. His images will sear themselves into your imagination. They are a glimpse into the largely hidden and unknown lives of beings that share our most basic needs: nourishing food, a dry place to rest and rear offspring and a refuge from predators.

That’s the message of Krasemann’s extraordinary work, which is one element in our annual issue featuring wildlife stories of the year. Executive editor Eric Harris, who handles our wildlife reportage, finds that human-wildlife interactions are at the heart of most of the important wildlife news stories from the past year. In the third element of the package, writer Candace Savage tells the story of the creation of the world’s first pollinator park in Guelph, Ont. And check out the winners of our first Canadian Wildlife Photography of the Year Contest.

Also in this issue, Canada’s most knowledgeable and accomplished archaeology writer, Heather Pringle, revisits the story of the young man whose body was found in 1999 on the melting margins of a glacier in northern British Columbia. Since the discovery, scientists have been studying his gear, travel route and remains. They estimate he died more than 200 years ago and, in a remarkable display of scientific detective work, have pieced together the outlines of his life, his background and his diet.

By the time you read this, Canadian Geographic will no longer be located at 39 McArthur Avenue in Ottawa, its home since July 1988. We are now some 20 blocks to the south, at 1155 Lola Street. It’s a bit of a relief, actually. We had been considering offices on Industrial Avenue. But we aren’t turning out mops or mugs here, so we’re happy to be on sweet Lola Street, behind the United Way and just down the road from RCMP headquarters. We feel secure in our new home, and warm, dry and well nourished on a rich diet of letters from readers and smart stories and fresh photos from our contributors.

— Rick Boychuk

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