Princess Royal Island
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Princess Royal Island, in British Columbia, is part of the Great Bear Rain Forest, the largest remaining temperate coastal rain forest. That area, containing more than 15 million acres, has only about 25,000 inhabitants. The island is located amongst the isolated inlets and islands of Canada’s Pacific shore, the British Columbia Coast, and is the largest island on BC's central coast. This is an extremely remote area of British Columbia, 520 kilometers north of Vancouver and 200 kilometers south of Prince Rupert, accessible only by boat or air. Aside from the Tsimshian, who once inhabited a coastal village on the island but now no longer live here, almost no people have entered the inland rainforest of Princess Royal Island.
Princess Royal Island is best known as being home to the legendary white Kermode bear, Spirit Bear of the North Coast of British Columbia. These magnificent bears are not found anywhere else in the entire world. Other wildlife on Princess Royal Island includes a large population of black bears, grizzly bears, deer, wolves and foxes, and nesting populations of golden eagles, bald eagles, and the endangered marbled murrelet. Marine life around the island includes abundant salmon, elephant seals, orcas and porpoises.
