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Preface - Introduction - CHAPTERS: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12
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*Grizzly bear

Excepting the polar and Kodiak bears, the world's largest and strongest terrestrial predator is the grizzly bear, Ursus horribilis, a magnificent and much misunderstood animal. Like Kodiaks, grizzlies generally are recognized as a subspecies of brown bear, Ursus arctos. There is much disagreement on classification of varieties.

Grizzlies resemble their black bear cousins, but are larger, with a prominent hump in the shoulder and longer, straighter claws. Fur commonly is brown with silver-tipped hairs, but grizzlies vary greatly in coloration and other features. Adult grizzlies in the continental US typically weigh 300 to 600 pounds, occasionally 800 pounds or more. Most stand 3'-5' high at the shoulder and about 6'-7' end to end. Males generally are much larger than females.

The Great Bear can run more than 40 miles per hour, live to 30 years of age in the wild, and is so powerful it can crush a hereford's skull like an eggshell. Grizzlies are very broadly territorial and range widely, as individuals, or in families or small groups of families. They require large areas with a variety of terrain and food sources.

Grizzlies are gatherer-hunters and will in fact eat practically anything that lives or once did. They kill and eat many kinds of animals, but studies show that 70%-80% of their diet in the Lower 48 consists of plant foods, often grass and sedges. (However, their diet probably has become more plant-centered since the most predatory bears were killed off over the years.) Their most significant nutritional component is plant protein. Grizzlies generally dislike human flesh and usually keep their distance from people. Nonetheless, more than any Western carnivore they do kill and sometimes eat humans, though so rarely that there is a greater risk of being killed by a falling tree. Their few attacks on people almost invariably occur when the bears are cornered, provoked, wounded, or when protecting young (especially), bedding sites, or food. Humans are the grizzly's only enemy.

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A grizzly bear eating berries. (George Wuerthner)

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(Source: Peacock 1988)

Because the grizzly needs a large, pristine, and diverse habitat, his continued existence guarantees survival of many forms of life. He is a measure of the health of the whole system.

-- Annick Smith, from Great Bear

When Europeans arrived on this continent, a conservatively estimated 100,000 grizzly bears roamed plains, plateaus, valleys, mesas, hills, and mountains of the West. The explorers Lewis and Clark in their 1804-1806 journey reported sighting grizzly and black bears most days and killing at least a few of them almost every week (Thwaites 1959). Seventeenth century Spaniards in California occasionally reported seeing 50 or 60 grizzlies in one day, many of them feeding in actual herds (McNamee 1985). Grizzly range encompassed the entire western half of what is now the United States, excepting and regions and the wettest portion of the Pacific Northwest. Unlike today, preEuropean grizzlies lived an open and sunny existence, roaming freely across the landscape -- grasslands, lowelevation woods, and riparian zones (even within deserts) included.

There was no attempt to isolate the livestock killers; all grizzlies were sheep and cattle killers to the stockman and therefore they were executed whenever and wherever they were encountered.

-- J.J. McCoy, Wild Enemies (McCoy 1974)

The griz fell victim to the standard livestock scenario: as ranchers took over most of the West in the mid-1800s, they killed as many grizzlies as they could. Their livestock so overgrazed the grizzly's habitat that its food source of grass, forbs, leaves, berries, fruits, nuts, roots, tubers, insects, and grubs was seriously depleted. Range management and overgrazing's secondary effects drastically reduced the number and variety of prey animals, and riparian and waterway damage lowered fish populations. In a twist of irony, surviving grizzlies sometimes of necessity took to eating the livestock that had ravaged their habitat. David Brown relates in The Grizzly in the Southwest, "Like the wolf, the opportunistic grizzly was not about to forego a new and readily available food source -- not when this new-found prey had depleted the grizzly's natural food supplies (Brown 1985)."

Nevertheless, the grizzly never was the rabid livestock killer portrayed. Grizzly expert Doug Peacock writes:

Protecting livestock was ostensibly the principal reason for killing grizzlies. Yet few bears actually preyed on domestic animals. Bears were shot due to ignorance, irrational hatred, and the illusions of what constituted duty or sport. (Peacock 1988)

Early explorers, trappers, and settlers across the West shot all grizzlies they encountered as a service to stockmen and to general human advancement. Some used dynamite. In California, many early ranchers made sport and money by staging grizzly/bull fights. The bears usually won, but ranchers provided them a never-ending supply of bulls. (McNamee 1985) By the end of the 1800s, grizzlies were extirpated from much of the West.

With grizzlies on the run in the early 1900s, livestock interests stepped up the slaughter. The plains grizzly, a variety that once preyed on bison and pronghorn but was forced to prey on livestock, was driven to extinction. The federal government trapped, shot, and poisoned remaining grizzlies without restraint. Stockmen shot them on sight or paid bounties. According to Lance Olsen, Director of the Great Bear Foundation in Missoula, Montana, "By the 1920s, grizzlies survived only in remote and rugged mountains where the livestock industry had not yet penetrated." As with so many Western species, the grizzly was forced to change its habits and confine itself to inhospitable areas rarely visited by humans or their livestock. In Mexico, griz held out in small numbers in the northern Sierra Madre until the 1960s when ranchers launched a final assault with guns, traps, and poisons.

In the US West today 99% -- including the best -- of the grizzly's former habitat is no longer home to these awesome omnivores. In California, whose state flag features the grizzly, a grizzly population of about 20,000 -- possibly the second highest brown bear concentration in the world -- was reduced to zero. In the 48 contiguous states probably less than 800 grizzlies survive in 6 relatively small enclaves at high elevations in the northern Rocky Mountains, mostly in Wilderness Areas and National Parks. Only 2 of these enclaves harbor enough grizzlies to be considered sufficient for genetically viable, self-sustaining populations -- the Northern Continental Divide and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystems (including Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks). Nearly all surviving grizzlies live on public land. (Brown 1985, McNamee 1985, Peacock 1988)

Unfortunately, livestock, sheep especially, are grazed in or near most of these rugged, remote areas. And grizzlies occasionally do eat a dozen sheep or a few cows. As one grizzly expert put it, "These docile, defenseless flocks of sheep must to a grizzly seem like some benevolent soul has set the table." Nonetheless, depredation has been exaggerated by ranchers, who aim to make sure grizzlies are not allowed to make a comeback.

Systematic extermination of grizzlies continued into the 1970s. Since then, many "problem" grizzlies have been killed by government officials, while poachers, slob hunters, and general development in their range have taken a heavy toll. But conflict and slaughter in or near these high elevation sheep allotments probably continues as the major single factor working against their survival.

Records show that in the second largest grizzly population in the Lower 48, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, 20 grizzlies were killed on sheep allotments between 1970 and 1975. Curiously, since 1975, when grizzlies were officially classified as a Threatened species, there have been no grizzly killings reported on Yellowstone-area sheep ranges. Why? Because grizzly killers are now subject to fines and official investigations. Now the rule, even more than before, is "shoot, shovel, and shut up."

For example: In 1978 in the Targee National Forest portion of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem there were 2 known grizzly killings by sheepherders. In a 1980 report to the Wyoming Department of Game & Fish, biologist Larry Roop stated,

One of these was discovered only because it was a radio-collared bear The other was discovered by a researcher in a sheepherder's camp. Because of the discovery the researcher was threatened and was unable to collect the skull for study.

... There were four more Grizzly Bear mortalities strongly suspect ed, but not confirmed, in the Targee National Forest during 1979. All of these losses were associated with sheep grazing.

A 1979 report by the Yellowstone Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team stated that "Information gathered by undercover agents and volunteered by sheepherders indicated that at least three other grizzlies and possibly as many as fourteen have been killed in the last two years . . . ."

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(Brush Wolf)

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A 1988 report prepared by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition states that since 1975, 20% of all known and probable grizzly mortalities resulted from conflicts between bears and livestock. The report also noted that livestock may eliminate or reduce the plants grizzlies need for food, leading indirectly to increased mortality, either through starvation or by forcing the bears to forage more widely, bringing them into contact with people. Forty-four percent of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is open to livestock grazing.

The situation is even worse in the largest grizzly enclave, the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem in Montana, where 31 of 35 reported "grizzly bear control actions" between 1967 and 1983 were related to sheep depredations. Further, biologists agree that there is at least 1 unknown death for every known kill. (Dogmeat 1986)

The [cattle-eating grizzly] was captured, tranquilized, fitted with a radio-transmitting collar, and transported far from Choteau [Montana] to the western side of the Continental Divide. Within days the bear was back killing cattle again, and this time was killed in a state-sanctioned hunt. Ranchers tend to think that predatory animals caught in the act of killing livestock should receive no second chances.

--Henry Schacht, Farm Reporter, 10-23-87 San Francisco Chronicle

Not only does the ranching industry bear (so to speak) more responsibility than anyone else for grizzly extermination, but also for subsequent failure to reintroduce the bruin. There are biologically excellent reintroduction sites for the grizzly in every Western state, except perhaps Nevada. Yet, even with the promise of guaranteed compensation for livestock losses, the industry refuses to reconsider its opposition. Thus, despite legal mandates, no Western state plans to reintroduce the animal. The grizzly's needs, the public's desire, environmental integrity -- all take a back seat with the Imperial Graziers at the wheel.

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The heedless [grizzly] bear that roamed the open and fed by day is gone. His place is taken by bears that feed secretly, silently, by night, in cover -- always secretly ... He has retreated to secluded fastnesses, to wild and inaccessible regions of thicket and mountainside. He is changed in temper as in life, and the faintest whiff of man scent is now enough to drive him miles away.

--Naturalist Ernest Thomas Seton

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