The California Grizzly Bear

The bears used dens in the hills at lower elevations for shelter from the weather and for rearing their young until they could be able to travel on the surface. There is no precise information about the reproduction of these bears in Storer and Tevis' book. However, according to the Defenders of Wildlife website, grizzly bears have very low reproductive potential ("Basic Facts"). .
             The extinction of California grizzly bears has a close relationship with humankind development history of California. Via Bering land bridge formed during the Ice Age, the bears arrived in North America from Eurasia before human being migrated to America (Storer and Tevis, 16).The habitat in California for the bears was a paradise because of the rather sparse population of the Native Americans, Indians, causing an interesting bear-to-man ratio 13-to-1 (Storer and Tevis 17 & XV). However, after the white men invested California, the ratio dropped greatly. "On September 2, 1769, a small expedition of leatherjacket soldiers, missionaries and muleteers killed a large-but-lean grizzly bear on the shore of an ocean-side lake in Upper California about 80 miles north of today's Santa Barbara It was the first time that a white man had ever killed a California grizzly" (Silva 66). Since then, "How I killed the bear" had become the wordiest word during those days. It was the white men's arrival that started the hunting of the bears. Another major human activity related to the extinction of California grizzly bears is the Gold Rush. The California Gold Rush began in 1848, when James W. Marshall found the gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. According to California Department of Parks and Recreation, the state's non-Indian population rise from 14,000 to 250,000 by 1852 because of the Gold Rush ("Gold Rush Overview"). "During the California Gold Rush, miners found grizzlies to be good sources of meat and fur coats and blankets" (Silva 66).