Right now, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is considering an option to set aside 110,000 square miles for 300-400 Grizzly Bears in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.
If the US Fish and Wildlife Service decides to move forward with the reintroduction (Europe recently reintroduced Grizzlies into the Alps) it’ll be a long process. Environmental reviews, hearings, red tape, god-awful lawyers, and more.
There are some tough questions out there on this grizzly topic:
“I can understand people wanting to see them here. But is it really suitable, given that California has nearly 40 million people?” – Eric Loft, chief of wildlife for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
California Grizzly Bears (Ursus arctos californicus), or California Golden Bears, were once ubiquitous in California. There were Grizzlies everywhere in California except for the Mojave desert. The California Girzzly Bear is reported to have been the largest of all Grizzly Bears with one specimen being killed in a town outside San Diego (Valley Center) that stood 8 feet tall and weighed 2,200 lbs in 1866.
It’s estimated that there were around 10,000 grizzlies in California when European settlers arrived. That’s a helluva lotta Griz. To make a fair comparison, British Columbia, which is 6 times the size of California, had about 25,000 grizzlies when the Euros showed up. It’s thought that California had the highest concentration of Grizzly bears on Earth.
Canadian’s and Alaskans have been dealing with Grizzly Bears for decades. Of course the have to take extreme measure and travel outdoors with bear spray and guns – something Californians aren’t exactly accustom to.
“Those people are orders of magnitude tougher than we are,” he said. “They have incorporated in their worldview a certain measure of risk that most Californians would be horrified by.” – Dave Graber, former regional chief scientist for the National Park Service
He’s right. Californians aren’t psychologically ready to deal with Grizzly Bears. But, the gears were here first. So, what should we do?
“If there was place to put them, I would be arguing very strongly to put them there. I’m sorry there are so many people here.” – Dave Graber, former regional chief scientist for the National Park Service
Horrible idea. I for one care more about people than for grizzly bears. Cali already has problems with too many mountain lions, now you want to re-introduce grizzlies. Cali has a large black bear population. Grizzlies kill black bears if they are in their territory. They are extremely dangerous. That is the reason why the early settlers killed them off. The people living in Cali now would probably not want them to be hunted, and if they’re not hunted they’ll lose their fear of man. Then it’ll be like the mountain lion problem, too many bears, not enough territory. Then you will have them coming into populated areas looking for food. I wonder how many dead people it will take for the airheads currently running California to realize they made a mistake.
Maybe they will eat some of the 40 million. More bears, less people. We don’t always need to be the apex predator
horrible history we humans have. in a fair world, we’d be dead.
I’m with you man. We humans ought to be considering how to share space with other living things, especially the fascinating and potentially dangerous ones.
Make room California.