Giant Bears of Kodiak Island.

• Author: Rothenberg, Robert S.

Giant Bears of Kodiak Island

Columbia TriStar Home Video 57 minutes / $19.95

Six hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, the largest carnivore that walks the Earth coexists with the descendants of the native Alutiiq Indians who once owned the island they share. The Kodiak bear, standing up to 10 feet tall on its hind legs, weighing around 1,500 pounds, and capable of running 35 miles an hour, has but one enemy--man.

Endangered by hunters and finding their environment being encroached upon by civilization, the animals' numbers dwindled until Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt set aside 2,000,000 acres on the island for the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge. Nevertheless, they find themselves in direct competition with commercial fishermen for the salmon that return to the island to spawn and always have made up a large portion of the bears' summertime diet, putting more pressure on the fragile ecological balance that allows them to survive. As it is, less than half the cubs born...