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URSUS ARCTOS

The California grizzly bear (known as brown bear in Alaska) was not a creature of distant, remote mountain peaks as many assume, but instead roamed the lowlands of California from the shores of San Francisco Bay, to the floodplain marshes of the Sacramento Valley, to the desert slopes of the Los Angeles Basin. As it walked the land, this massive bear shaped entire ecosystems — turning over soil in search of rodents and bulbs, dragging nutrient-rich salmon from the rivers onto land, devouring carcasses and grazing in grasslands like a cow. The California grizzly was a unique and surprising creature, not backing down from humans but neither going out of its way to bother them. In fact, early observers described the bear as serene and dignified in its behavior. Unlike seven other subspecies found in North America, the grizzlies found in California may not have hibernated and apparently had cubs in any season.

NATURAL HISTORY

The grizzly's lowland habitat placed it in the path of the newly arrived European settlers, and within 75 years of the discovery of gold, the last known grizzly was killed in Tulare County in 1922. California is the only state that extirpated its own totem animal.

KEY CHARACTERISTICS

This powerful bear could weigh more than 1,000 pounds and reach 7 feet in length; its 6-inch-long claws helped it dig up bulbs.

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