Ursus Arctos Californicus

There was a time when a grizzly in California could walk with its head, feasting on whale carcasses, and digging for roots in the coastal hills. Groups of bears acted as giant plows, turning over and reinvigorating the soil. The largest, shot in valley center, San Diego, weighed 2,200 pounds, outweighing Yellowstone’s largest grizzlies by 500 pounds. The mild coastal climate, and plentiful roots, berries, whale carcasses, salmon, and human babies(okay, I kid) allowed them to achieve such gargantuan sizes. The golden state was home to an estimated 10,000 bears at its peak, and native american tribes revered the furry giants as a manifestation of the divine. The white man didn’t. In 1769, Gaspar de Portola’s expedition was saved from starvation when bears were killed for meat in what is now Los Osos in San Luis Obispo county. Pre-dating the invention of the repeating rifle, they were hunted, often as bears attempted to feast on cattle. Mexican ranchers called vaqueros killed bears by lassoing them, dragging them over the ground and pulling them apart, killing as many as 20 in a single night.

“The animals were lassoed by the throat and also by the hind leg, a horseman at each end, and the two pulling in opposite directions until the poor beast succumbed. The fun was kept up until about daylight, and when they got through they were completely exhausted” 

“This method of hunting the bear is one of the noblest diversions with which I am acquainted. It requires an extraordinary degree of courage for a man to ride up beside a savage monster like the grizzly bear of this country”

“Fages himself headed a company of soldiers to hunt bears in the Canada De Los Osos. They roved about the valley, in which San Luis Obispo mission was founded, for about three months. During this time the hunters were enabled to send twenty five loads, or about 9,000 pounds of bear meat to san carlos and San Antonio, besides wild seeds purchased from the savages''(Zephyrin engelhardt)

The stock market terminology for a bear and bull market originates from the practice of forcing grizzlies and bulls to fight to the death, ironically after church on sunday. The practice was made possible by starving the wild caught bear for a few days, before giving it a salty piece of ham, which it promptly consumed. Then, thirsty, weak, and dehydrated, it was offered water mixed with alcohol, which it drank, thus making the bear combat ready. 

“Usually several combats could be had between a bull and bear before either was killed, which made this novel sport one of immense profit to those who owned the animals”

The bears were known to win the majority of the time, and attacked by swiping down, while the bulls attacked by slashing upwards, giving rise to the terms we know today. 

“Notwithstanding repeated expeditions against them, bears continued to be plentiful down to the time when the American hooters and trappers came to the country; but they then began to be thinned out. At the time of the American occupation there were still many, but, as the country filled up, they became scarcer and are now only found in remote places”(History of CA,1898)

In this manner, the bear went extinct. It was poisoned, trapped, hunted, and exterminated for a myriad of reasons, for sport, out of fear, defense of livestock, and a need to prove oneself as “manly”. It was a vestigial symbol of the dying wild, being pushed further inland after the gold rush and as more people filled up the state of California. The stories, half truths, and anthropocentric tall tales told about the bear enhanced their reputation as bloodthirsty man eaters, and motivated hunters to persecute it. Scientists never got a good chance to study it or dispel the fog of superstition that enveloped it. Most of what we know about the bear is told by the narrators of its demise, who locked eyes with one down the length of a rifle barrel. Their large population at the onset, and muscular build gave early settlers the impression that they were invincible. The common belief at the time was that nature’s reserves were endless, and that the consequences of human actions were trivial. Consequently, hunting was not regulated, and populations began to plummet.

Interview of Colin Preston, San Luis Obispo, 1845, Harper’s magazine:

Colin: “This region(SLO) pleases me. There are bears larger, stronger, and more difficult to kill than the lions of Algeria(Barbary lion, another species hunted to extinction). One of these will sometimes overtake a horse at speed. They are long limbed, active, and full of cunning. As for their courage, they are seldom disheartened except by fatal wounds. The bear of this country resembles the man who hunts him, and it is this resemblance of character that gives interest to the chase”

Interviewer: “How many bears have you killed in California?

Colin: “Seventy large bears, and twice the number of smaller ones. The cubs and young bear of the season are excellent eating, but a man must be hungry to eat the sinewy flesh of a full grown grizzly”

Interviewer: “Two hundred and ten in ten years!”

Colin: “Yes, but they are scarcer now. When I came here first we saw them every day. Now we ride sometimes fifty miles to find a bear”

The California grizzly bear’s raw strength and its position as apex predator caught the eye of those who began California's independence movement. For its strength and unwillingness to back down to settlers, it was emblemized as the symbol of California, striding across the state flag. But the bear was suddenly out of place. The sunny beaches and inland chaparral hills it called home became San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. 

It was hunted and persecuted, the last confirmed one being killed on February 26, 1908 in Trabuco Canyon in eastern Orange County. The 600 pound bear was caught in a trap, which it dragged for five miles before fighting off dogs and being killed with three shots to the head. She was called “Little black bear” while alive, but now taxidermied, goes by specimen 156594 in the Smithsonian. There was one final sighting in 1924 in Sequoia Park. 

That was the last anyone saw of the California grizzly, which marks almost a century since the last bear roamed the state. But its death speaks to a greater ecological change. The old apex predator has been replaced by the new, and the wild has been replaced by the sprawling urban jungle. Through our actions, the world is becoming less habitable for animals that require untouched expanses of land. Ernest Seton wistfully wrote that the grizzly had been “left at the mercy of men with no mercy”. The loss of the grizzly is symbolic of what else California lost. Salmon runs in the rivers, riparian woodlands, foggy coastal wetlands, the warm glow of the sun and the salty tang of the sea on a desolate beach, places of uncontaminated nature, free of the pollution, climate change, extinctions, and invasive species brought on by man. Much has been lost in the hurried and blind chasing of so-called “progress” and “civilization”. We still have much to learn to coexist peacefully and cooperatively with the species in our backyards, within the balances of a finite planet. But let the California grizzly and the demise of those like it serve not just as a dismal narrative but also an education. An awakening so that the broken, inbred, fragmented and dying pockets of the natural world might be given the chance to survive and thrive again.