Enthralled by wildlife

Many tourists make the trip to Alaska, and Canada's British Columbia (BC) and Yukon Territory, just to see the wildlife.

Alaska is the largest State in the US but has just 730,000 residents concentrated in the south around Anchorage and the south-east "panhandle" which includes its capital, Juneau.

Eighty per cent of the 1.5 million tourists visiting Alaska each year go to the south-east, most arriving by cruise ship and air. From the south-east they can add value to their trip by visiting Canada's Yukon and north-western BC to see a greater variety of scenery and wildlife.

The scenery is spell binding but it's the animals which draw most tourists, especially photographers and anglers. Interestingly, after the wildlife and scenery, Alaska's Tourism Department reports shopping is the next most popular activity.

Fishing is certainly popular. While fishing quietly and unobtrusively, you're unlikely to be noticed by animals such as beavers busily motoring up and down a river with branches - building material for their lodges. When fishing a river in northern BC, I once saw a group of otters attack a beaver family in its lodge in an attempt to get the beaver kittens. Such battles are apparently not uncommon but that day the much larger and stronger beavers sent the otters packing. On the same river several days later I watched an osprey catch an Arctic grayling. Being in BC and Alaska is like watching a David Attenborough series in real life.

The Yukon, about two-thirds the size of BC, has a population of just 34,000, most of them First Nations representing eight tribes. This place really is remote and is well worth visiting - because it is so pristine, its wildlife is exceptional. Kluane National Park in the Yukon's south-west is part of the Kluane/Wrangell-St Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek UNESCO World Heritage site. It's one of the world's largest national parks and its 130,000sqkm are shared by the Yukon, BC and Alaska.

It is notable for its timber wolves, grizzly bears, caribou, Dall sheep and 105 species of birds.

You can access its eastern border from the Alaska Highway if you drive from Whitehorse, the Yukon's capital, west to Haines Junction, then head south to Haines, Alaska. This is only a five-hour drive and a beautiful one. The forest has been cleared for up to 50m either side of the highway so you're not surprised by large animals crossing. This also means you do see lots of animals, including deer, porcupines, lynx, caribou and bears - often with cubs - in the open.

Heading west, the mountains of Alaska loom mightily. Turning left to head south from Haines Junction, still in the Yukon but now on the Haines Highway (the Alaska Highway continues north-west), you enter high alpine scenery, much of it above the tree line, and large areas of muskeg, shallow peat swamps, in the valley bottoms. This is where you're most likely to spot moose, elk and birds of prey, notably the elusive gyrfalcon and golden eagle.

Heading south, the road drops into steep valleys and the forest begins to reappear, not just the ever-present spruce but birch, aspen and other deciduous trees. With luck, you might just see an elusive cougar. There are about 3500 of these beautiful big cats in BC, a quarter of them in the still largely virgin mountain forests of Vancouver Island. You would be lucky to see one and very unlucky to be attacked - fatal cougar attacks are rarer than fatal bee stings.

In autumn, this landscape glows golden and crimson, like it's lit from within. As well as the trees, rosebay willowherb grows alongside the road and on the valley sides. This is an ordinary- looking shrub until autumn, when it turns bright red, earning its Canadian nickname of "fireweed" and its place as the floral emblem of the Yukon.

As you descend towards Haines, you cross the US border into Alaska. Haines sits beneath snow-capped peaks on the Chilkoot Inlet at the northern end of the Inside Passage. The passage is the safe marine highway that weaves its way through the islands of the Pacific Coast all the way up from the US Washington State, so avoiding exposure to most of the heavy Pacific seas and weather. Further up the inlet - really a fjord - is Skagway, the principal destination of the many cruise ships that tour the Inside Passage via Juneau, Alaska's capital, and on westwards to the magnificent Glacier Bay National Park.

You could base yourself at Haines for an entire summer and marvel at the wildlife. Here you are almost guaranteed to see more bald eagles and grizzly and black bears than anywhere else in the Pacific north-west - and within a 20-minute drive from town. Year-round the Chilkat Valley is home to 200-400 bald eagles but in autumn up to 4000 gather there, attracted by spawned-out salmon in the Chilkat River.

Book a cruise or hire your own kayak or boat at Haines, Skagway or Juneau, to see seals, sea otters, orcas and humpback whales. With luck, on a cruise you might see a group of humpbacks bubble feeding, an extraordinary co-ordinated technique whereby the group will dive on a herring school and one of them will release a ring of bubbles from its blowhole, frightening the prey into a tight bait ball. The whales then lunge upwards in unison with gaping mouths through the school.

Sea otters are visible from the shore but a boat gives you a closer view. These are especially charming creatures. They spend most of their lives at sea insulated by their thick fur coats and often rest in family groups called rafts. They sleep on their backs and hold paws so they don't drift apart. At 1.5m from nose to tail they are bigger than river otters, which are usually less than a metre.

This region of North America is spellbinding. If you arrive at Haines by ship you'll see a sign on the dock saying simply: "Breathe". It's a good message - amid so much wonder you'll often find yourself holding your breath.