The Blog
Bear 71 is a true story of a female grizzly bear monitored by wildlife conservation officers from 2001 – 2009. She lived her life under constant surveillance and was constantly stressed by interactions with the human world. Following Bear 71, the 20 min interactive web documentary explores the connections between the human and animal world, and the far-ranging effects that human settlements, roads and railways have on wildlife. Created by Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison, the project features a map of Banff National Park that allows users to follow Bear 71’s movements by scrolling over the cameras.
The project uses thousands of hours of wildlife footage captured on remote trail cameras in the park. What I liked the most is that story is told form the perspective of Bear 71 herself. As she puts it: “Constant video surveillance, satellite tracking, radio collars… sometimes it’s hard to tell where the wired world ends and the wild one begins”.
According to the counter I was human 1698032 so I’m guessing over one and a half million people have already watched Bear 71! Check it out and enjoy (includes an amazing soundtrack featuring Radiohead)!
