California grizzly

[oldgreengrolar]

Ursus arctos californicus in the Santa Barbara, Natural History Museum





Scientific name:  Ursus arctos californicus (Merriam, 1896



Description:  A large bear, said to have been similar to the coastal grizzlies of Alaska.  The skull was long and narrow with a massive underjaw.  Pelage typically, but not exclusively, brownish yellow (hence the alternative common name “California golden bear”).



Range:  Believed to have originally occupied all but the southeast and extreme northeast of what is present-day California.  Increasingly became confined to the mountain regions away from the presence of humans.







Habitat:  Open meadows, forests, sub-alpine mountain regions, tundra and coastal regions.  They would have travelled to areas where food was abundant according to seasonal variations.



Life span:  Probably twenty to thirty years in the wild.



Food:  The bears were omnivorous with a diet that included grasses, seeds, berries, roots, nuts, acorns, small and large mammals including elk and deer, fish and carrion including beached whale carcasses.



Behaviour:  The bears reached sexual maturity between the ages of four and seven years.  Mating occurred between mid-June and July.  The bears went into winter dens usually in October or November and typically emerged in April or May.  Cubs were born in the den most likely in January.  Litters were probably between one and four cubs, most commonly of two or three.  They remained with the mother for two to three years during which time she would not become pregnant again.  Except for mating and for mothers with cubs, California grizzlies were solitary but probably congregated in groups where there are plentiful sources of food, such as at salmon spawning grounds and whale carcasses.



Reasons for extinction:  As the human population of California increased conflicts between bears and humans escalated with the bears killing livestock and attacking settlers.  The bears were hunted and killed for sport but also captured and used in bear and bull fights.  The last hunted California grizzly bear was shot in Tulare County in August 1922 and the last reported sighting was in 1924 in Sequoia National Park. 





MORE INFORMATION



California Grizzly by Tracy I Storer & Lloyd P Tevis, Jr. (California, 1996).  First published in 1955 this book remains as relevant as ever.  Arguably the definitive account of the California grizzly bear.





www.bearconservation.org.uk/california-grizzly-bear-extinct/

[oldgreengrolar]

California grizzlies were smaller in size and not the livestock killers reported in historical accounts, study says





(a) Biplot showing stable isotope values for California grizzlies and their potential food items statewide across the pre and post periods. (b) Biplot showing the individual grizzlies in the pre (gray) and post (red) 1542 periods. Credit: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.0921

phys.org/news/2024-01-california-grizzlies-smaller-size-livestock.html



Coupled social and ecological change drove the historical extinction of the California grizzly bear (Ursus arctos californicus)

Abstract

Large carnivores (order Carnivora) are among the world's most threatened mammals due to a confluence of ecological and social forces that have unfolded over centuries. Combining specimens from natural history collections with documents from archival records, we reconstructed the factors surrounding the extinction of the California grizzly bear (Ursus arctos californicus), a once-abundant brown bear subspecies last seen in 1924. Historical documents portrayed California grizzlies as massive hypercarnivores that endangered public safety. Yet, morphological measurements on skulls and teeth generate smaller body size estimates in alignment with extant North American grizzly populations (approx. 200 kg). Stable isotope analysis (δ13C, δ15N) of pelts and bones (n = 57) revealed that grizzlies derived less than 10% of their nutrition from terrestrial animal sources and were therefore largely herbivorous for millennia prior to the first European arrival in this region in 1542. Later colonial land uses, beginning in 1769 with the Mission era, led grizzlies to moderately increase animal protein consumption (up to 26% of diet), but grizzlies still consumed far less livestock than otherwise claimed by contemporary accounts. We show how human activities can provoke short-term behavioural shifts, such as heightened levels of carnivory, that in turn can lead to exaggerated predation narratives and incentivize persecution, triggering rapid loss of an otherwise widespread and ecologically flexible animal.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2023.0921