Famous white grizzly bear killed by car

A rare white grizzly bear who became a viral sensation due to her habit of frequently loitering on the shoulder of a busy Canadian highway died last week when she was hit by a car, just hours after her two cubs suffered a similar fate.

Wildlife management staff were repairing fencing along the highway west of Lake Louise on June 6 while attempting to “encourage the bear to stay away from the side of the road,” Parks Canada said Monday in a statement carried by CBC News. The bear was reportedly startled by a train and ran into the road, where it was struck by a vehicle.

After officials observed Nakoda (identified by researchers as Bear 178) climb over a fence and run into the woods with “no visible injuries other than a limp,” they initially thought the bear would survive, according to a Canadian Press report. But a signal from the tracking collar on June 8 alerted biologists that the bear was dead.

The accident occurred just 12 hours after Nakoda’s two boys were hit and killed on the same highway.

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“Since 2022, our Parks Canada wildlife management team has actually spent a lot of time, and I mean hundreds and hundreds of hours, caring for Bear 178,” said Saudi Stevens, a Parks Canada wildlife management specialist, during a press conference announcing the deaths. “Just a few weeks ago, everyone in our office was celebrating her coming out of the den with two new cubs.”

Nakoda was not an albino bear, although she was known for her unusual white fur. Rather, her distinctive appearance is believed to be due to a natural color phase variation that, while rare, is not unknown.

“As far as I know, he’s certainly the only one that’s been spotted in our Rocky Mountain National Park, but throughout the grizzly bear range, their colour is known to vary from very dark to almost black,” Seth Cherry, a wildlife ecologist with Canada Parks, told Global News in 2020. “The more typical colours are brown or blond, but occasionally you’ll see really light-coloured bears like this one that look almost white.”