I recently went on an adventure to a remote coastal region of British Columbia hoping to garner an understanding for the ways of the wild and the unique systems which have for centuries helped support a healthy and vital environment.

I discovered an integral piece of this puzzle lies in the powerful presence of the Grizzly. Watching from afar, I learned much about the bears impact and influence on the land, its creatures and wild resources.

Putting this into practice for the modern man and woman I have outlined governing principles which encompass the Great Grizzly as a Guide.

Eat for the Earth
Follow the seasons when you eat and return the remains of your meal in natural form to the earth, so nutrients can then feed a fertile soil. Grizzlies are natural gardeners, digging in forage they prepare seed beds for germination and also spread seed when they visit the bear bathroom. This is good for the earth and other creatures great and small who refuel on the rich resources growing in the grizzlies garden. Consume then Compost to reduce your living impact on earths natural resources!

Grow like a Griz on Greens
The food habits of the Great Grizzly depend largely on environment but also on adaptive food preferences. According to Shepard and Sanders authors of the Sacred Paw, “All bears are omnivorous but the proportion of meat to plants in their diets varies, not only among different species but seasonally and with availability.”

Subsisting on seasonal foods means the grizzly will at times source all their energy from a vegetarian diet. In fact, the North American brown bear typically eats more than 200 types of plants and consumes a higher percentage of vegetation (85-98%) than many other bears. Whilst the Syrian brown bear is almost totally vegetarian.

Lyngby’s sedge (Carex lyngbyei) a main staple for bears during spring, contains 25% raw protein. A common shoreline sedge to the Pacific Northwest it can be purchased from native plant nurseries (ie. Woodbrook) to snip and sprinkle over your salad!

Earn what you Eat
Sourcing food from aquatic habitats, ground vegetation – above and below, and trees the grizzly enlists skill and physical effort to acquire their food. Swimming (can catch 60-100 fish a day), digging, leveraging rock, stripping bark and climbing to fuel their powerful frames. Put some muscle into your meals and maintain a healthy body through functional exercise. Get outdoors leaving electrical expense behind and work up a sweat the old fashioned way. This not only minimises your energy consumption but healthcare outlay as well.

Bear Behaviour Benefits
The Grizzly lives an ‘eco-vital’ existence adding value to the earth through a lifestyle which enriches the environment rather than depletes it. If all humans heeded the example they set, the world would be a better place, eco-systems would sustain through natural means and our resources would renew themselves.

Back the Bears
The Great Grizzly needs guardians for as impressive a beast as the bear maybe it too has succumb to the changing climate and conditions of a modern world. Of greatest impact to the Griz is land fragmentation and the loss of their Freedom to Roam.

With the grizzly bear as its compass, Vital Ground works to reconnect fragmented landscapes in the U.S. and Canada critical to wildlife movement and biodiversity. Because the grizzly’s range covers several hundred square miles—from alpine meadows to valley bottoms—protecting and expanding habitat and migration corridors important to the Great Bear benefits entire animal and plant communities in the wildest, yet most imperiled places left on the continent. Since its founding in 1990, Vital Ground has helped to protect and enhance more than 604,000 acres of wildlife habitat in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Alaska, and British Columbia.

Click here to donate to Vital Ground and become a guardian for the Great Griz.

Salmon fatten on the bounty of the sea, then return to their birth rivers, where they are the building blocks of forest ecosystems. Rivers are the highways that deliver them home. But the Columbia and Snake River Basin has been transformed by more than 200 dams. For nearly two decades, a growing constituency of fishermen, farmers, business leaders, brave politicians and conservation groups like Save Our Wild Salmon have been backing a modest proposal: Take out four dams on the lower Snake. Just four dams.

“There used to be this huge biomass of chinook salmon in the ocean, produced by all the rivers of the Pacific Coast,” said Ken Balcomb, the director for the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island in Puget Sound. “We’re down to less than ten percent of historic abundance, and climate change will make it worse. But there’s a lot of intact habitat left on the Snake. It’s our best shot. I think any reasonable biologist will tell you to tear out the dams.”

Join Patagonia and Save Our Wild Salmon in urging the Obama Administration to change course and remove the four lower Snake River dams. Sign the petition to value conservation over construction!

Save Our Wild Salmon is a nationwide coalition of conservation organizations, commercial and sportsfishing associations, businesses, river groups, and taxpayer advocates working collectively to restore self-sustaining, abundant, and harvestable populations of wild salmon and steelhead to rivers, streams and oceans of the Pacific Salmon states.

Matter of Trust an ecologically minded educational public charity have taken advantage of the oil absorbing properties of natural fibre and are now orchestrating an INTERNATIONAL NATURAL FIBER RECYCLING MOVEMENT to prevent further devastation to marine life as a result of the Gulf Oil Spill.

We all know about shampooing our oily hair, but it took Phill McCrory, a stylist from Alabama, to realize that hair was an efficient and abundant material for collecting and containing petroleum spills. Phil’s company Ottimat.com sells hair mats made of hair purchased in China, where hair, fur and wool have been recycled for thousands of years.

For over a decade, Ottimat has partnered Matter of Trust to orchestrate an International Natural Fiber Recycling system and stimulate green jobs and the textile industry!

Anyone and Everyone: salons, groomers, wool farmers and individuals can sign up to donate hair, fur, waste wool… clippings and nylons and funding for their Hair for Oil Spills program.

The Excess Access program SIGN UP is FREE, FAST and HELPS Matter of Trust coordinate the masses of donations going to the Gulf.

EX, USPS (we’re getting our own zip codes now) as well as donated trucking, from every State in the US and from Canada, UK, France, Spain, Germany, Brazil.

Everyone wants to make this happen!

Booms are being made all along the Gulf Coast. And harbors Internationally are emailing team@matteroftrust.org about how to set up collection and storage for the 2,600 smaller spills every year!

Click here to learn more about becoming a hairy helper!

Founded 40 years ago, Earth Day has always been about celebrating the rich natural heritage we envision leaving to children and grandchildren.

Sadly, subdivision, commercial development, resource extraction, and growing human population demands continue to speed destruction of the last vital acres of habitat needed for the grizzly and other wildlife to disperse, migrate, forage, and have the elbow room they need to adapt to climate change.

Now more than at any time in history, habitat conservation — especially on key private lands — is an ecological imperative.

But as concerns rise regarding the adverse impacts of growth on the long-term integrity of habitat and wildlife, Vital Ground is on the job.

In fact, since Vital Ground’s founding in 1990, they have helped to protect and enhance more than 604,000 acres of habitat crucial to our icon animal, the mighty grizzly bear, and countless other species of plant- and animal life.

In celebration of the planet we all call home, Vital Ground encourage you to make a special contribution to their Strength of Connections Campaign — a campaign intended to protect key grizzly habitat and wildlife linkage lands in northwestern Montana and northern Idaho.

With your gift of $50 or more, you will receive a free Vital Ground logo water bottle (20 oz.) and with a gift of any size, you get a free Vital Ground 20th anniversary decal (measures 7 ½ x 3 ¾ in.).Offer valid through midnight Friday April 23, 2010.

Celebrate conservation and consider making a special Earth Day contribution to Vital Ground helping them continue to increase the pace, quality and permanence of conservation in areas critical to the Great Bear.