Although we have favorite wildlife locations in New England and Minnesota, almost all of SouthWild’s American expeditions are carried out in Alaska, where our sister company, NorthWild Travel, operates two amazing, purpose-built wilderness lodges that provide privileged access to literally the world’s finest locations for both Brown Bears and Polar Bears. How can we say something so outrageous, so over-the-top? Let me explain.
SouthWild spent the summers 2021 and 2022 operating exclusive expeditions for Apple TV to Richard Hojohn’s “Bear Central”, as he called his bear-rich land. Then in 2023, Richard asked Charles Munn to buy the property, as he felt that Charles was the only person he could trust to put the welfare of the bears before anything else (he was correct).
Charles created NorthWild Travel, which works hand-in-glove with SouthWild Travel, and in 2024, his Cornell-Hotel-School-graduate daughter, Paulina, whom Charles just promoted to CEO of NorthWild, designed and built a unique bear conservation lodge. They named the stunning, 8-room lodge “Brown Bear Bay”, as the lodge faces out onto mountain-rimmed Chinitna Bay in the shadow of the towering, snowcapped Iliamna Peak.
Here are the unique features of Brown Bear Bay that make it the world’s finest location for watching natural behavior of this, the world’s most massive land predators.
- Brown Bear Bay is the only lodge in the entire world where from within 5-25 m outside the windows, bears routinely scratch their backs hilariously on rough tree bark. There are eight species of bears in the world, and this is the only lodge on Earth where, right next to the lodge, any species of bear does that charming wriggle dance to scratch their backs.
- BBB has more Brown Bear mothers with cubs viewable and studyable than any other location on Earth.
- BBB has 3 different Salmon Runs in rivers that flow next to the property, and our 6-8 guests routinely are the only humans who regularly have bears pass them at 3-10 meters.
- BBB is immediately adjacent to but not inside the bear-rich, 4-million-acre Lake Clark National Park. Thus we have lots of bears but are not subject to the park’s many viewing restrictions. For instance, the national park does not allow visitors to approach any bears more closely than 100 yards, which means 91 meters, and the park also does not allow bear-watching after 1000 pm and before 5 am. Because the SouthWild/NorthWild conservation system employs the most experienced bear guides in the Western Hemisphere, and our guides understand bear behavior so very well, we can and do observe natural behavior of happy, relaxed bears from a lot less than 50 meters, with the bears often feeding and walking within 3-10 meters of us. And we watch bears 24 hours a day. It is common for our guests to spend an hour or two within 20 meters of a feeding mother bear and her cubs. The mother bears, who are residents of small territories in our part of the bay, have learned that our silent, immobile, seated guests are so predictably polite, quiet, and respectful that that mother bears choose to PARK their cubs only 10-20 m from our guests while they themselves wander about grazing on sedge. Our guests sit on strong, inverted buckets, which make perfect, lightweight, portable stools.
Adult male bears, on the other hand, have such gigantic territories that they do not have the luxury of learning exactly which locations have humans that truly can be trusted, so they assume that all humans are dangerous (a good assumption). Thus, the smart mother bears use our small, compact group of quiet, bucket-sitting humans as babysitters, in fact, as a SHIELD against male bears, who would love free access to kill the cubs. As it is, the male bears see our quiet guests sitting near the cubs and do not approach.
- Our guests can use drones early and often, but while being closely supervised by our guides. You see, many of the bears of the bay show no fear of small, relatively-quiet drones, and we know which bears have no fear of drones versus which ones do not like them. Drone photography is completely and totally prohibited in the national park, but we encourage you to bring and to fly your drones, but we monitor drone use carefully to ensure that no bears are bothered.
- Paulina designed and built BBB lodge consciously such that from almost all angles as you look out of the lodge, you only see wild nature, not human-made structures or features.
In August 2025, Charles Munn spent four days at BBB and found his time there to be the most astounding, transformative wildlife experience of his entire life, and he has seen a number of the most impressive wildlife spectacles in Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. He has yet to visit Antarctica, which he suspects might be similarly life-changing. Nevertheless, in Antarctica, the most massive land predators on Earth are not present and thus will not routinely walk within three paces of you.
The spectacle of so much wild nature, the mountains, the bears, the Bald Eagles, it is all just too much to believe.
