Famed Canadian naturalist Charlie Russell will have to change his summer plans after a crash south of Atlin totalled his ultralight plane May 27.

"My plane was totally destroyed,” Russell, who is known for his time spent living with grizzly bears in the Kamchatka region of Russia, told the Star Thursday.

"The bottom line was it was pilot error on my part.”

His two-seater plane doesn't have a lot of capacity in its tank, but Russell carries fuel with him in jerry cans.

When it was time to refuel, he searched for a lake on which to land, but bodies of water were strangely absent from the area just south of Atlin, he said.

Russell chose to land on a snowy surface on a mountain instead. After he touched down, he realized his makeshift runway was a lot smaller than he initially believed it to be.

"It was an optical illusion,” said Russell, who is staying inWhitehorse.

"I knew it was going to be a tight take-off.”

After he had refuelled, he was hit by a wind gust during lift-off, which sent him toward a group of trees. He knew he wouldn't be able to clear the trees, and on the other side of them was a steep drop-off.

Other pilots had told him that if he flew into the trees, the wings would absorb the force of the speed and his plane would come to a stop.

The method worked.

"I barely felt anything, but it totally destroyed my plane,” he said.

"The trick is to regain control, and I did that. I had control.”

What he should have done, he said, is take everything out of the plane and test the take-off "just to feel it.” Then, he could have ferried some of his belongings out of there in little pieces.

The crash was a result of a bit of carelessness and some bad luck, "but I'm healthy,” said Russell, who emerged from the event unscathed.

Following the incident, Russell called a friend who notified Emergency Medical Services personnel and a search and rescue team of Russell's circumstances.

Russell was rescued within hours, but he said he was prepared for the long haul.

"I was perfectly comfortable,” he said. "I could have stayed a week.”

The plane, however, was not as fortunate. It has since been removed from the area, and Russell hopes to salvage the engine and the inflatable floats.

"It's very dear to me,” Russell said about his aircraft.”It saw me through a lot of adventures.”

After he built the plane 18 years ago, Russell took it to Russia, where he flew it for 11 years until it was seized by Russian military personnel.

About a year later, Russell had the plane returned to him by some friends, but the engine had been damaged. He had just finished repairing it before he flew up to the Yukon from his home in Alberta.

Russell said he was scheduled to fly up to Old Crow with his Whitehorse girlfriend, Beverly Wood, but he will now have to terminate his summer plans.

However, there are a few plans he won't have to alter.

At some point this summer, Russell will speak in Dawson City about his experiences living with grizzly bears in the Kamchatka region of Russia.

Russell began working with bears in 1961, when he and his father were the first people to film the animals in their natural habitat.

The film brought him up to the Yukon because bears were scarce in Alberta.

"What I saw was an animal that was a lot different than the animal that was talked about,” he said.

Since that time, Russell has worked to reduce the fear people have about grizzlies.

"Bears are always in my sights as far as what I'm interested in,” he said.

"It's people and bears right now; people living with bears and how to do that better. There's always room for improvement.”

Russell will also speak in Whitehorse in the fall.

He plans to spend more time in the Yukon now that he is engaged to Wood. He proposed to her when he returned to Whitehorse the day of his crash.