Smile, bears: You're live on camera. The National Geographic Society has turned a webcam on Alaska's McNeil River Falls, where nearly 50 salmon-grubbing brown bears gather at a time between late June and early September.

The 200-square-mile McNeil River State Game Sanctuary protects the world's largest concentration of brown bears, but it's a sight few can enjoy each year because access to bruin-viewing at the sanctuary is limited and decided by lottery.

Now, the so-called BearCam is available to anyone with a computer and the latest version of the free RealPlayer plugin. Showtime is 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.

From 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., an interpreter at Homer's Pratt Museum narrates and controls the solar-powered BearCam, which is hidden in a fake boulder.

Other times, it cycles through preset positions, showing the bears as they lumber over river rocks and trudge through rushing white water. Their heads drop low, eyes scanning the churning river for salmon as hopeful gulls swoop overhead.

National Geographic hosts the footage but the webcam's creation came from a team of agencies, including the Pratt Musuem, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Alaska Wildlife Alliance, Friends of McNeil River, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, the Alaska Conservation Foundation and the Giles and Elise G. Mead Foundation.

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