High Sierra Topix

Is California Ready For The Grizzly Bear, Again?



By EZRA DAVID ROMERO • NOV 17, 2015
Valley Public Radio

At one time there were over 10,000 grizzly bears in California, but people’s fear of the enormous animal drove the bears to extinction. The last California grizzly bear was shot in Tulare County in 1924. One group would like to see the bears thrive again. But as Valley Public Radio’s Ezra David Romero reports not everyone thinks the idea is a good one.

The grizzly bear that roamed California less than 100 years ago didn’t just call the heights of the Sierra Nevada home. Wildlife Biologist Evan King and I are at the Kaweah Oaks Preserve just a few miles outside Visalia, a city of 130,000 people.

“Areas where the native species of the grizzly bear lived in California was on the valley floor, coastal regions, grass lands, exactly where we’re at,” says King.

The preserve is supposed to resemble what Central California looked like before humans introduced agriculture into the ecosystem. It’s lined with oak trees, wild grapevines, and willow thickets. The grey fox and the great horned owl call it home. But before the California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist and I could explore the preserve...

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If Sasquatch do indeed exist, then they are going to come across bears. It is inevitable. So what happens when these two goliaths meet? How do they interact with each other? To me this is a serious question for which the answer seems poorly understood and documented. Do Bigfoot and bears mostly avoid each other, ignore each other, fear each other, or become aggressive? It seems that according to some accounts these encounters can occasionally erupt into epic battles between these heavyweight powerhouses of the wild. While there is little good documentation on interactions between bears and Bigfoot, if these reports are anything to go by it does seem apparent that they are at least not above a good scrap from time to time, and the few such cases there are can perhaps offer us some fascinating insights into how Bigfoot and bears might regard each other, as well as their effect upon each other within their shared domain. Let’s take a look.

It seems that if Bigfoot are indeed real, then their shared habitat with bears would invariably lead to encounters between the two, and these seem to have the potential to perhaps turn violent under the right circumstances. Although there are a few reports that seem to suggest that the two creatures typically mostly avoid each other and that bears will even flee from an approaching Bigfoot, there are a variety of reasons for why they might come to blows. It may be over territory, protecting their young, or perhaps friction due to dwindling habitats. If the two species share similar diets, violent encounters may erupt over competition for dwindling food resources as well. It could even be something as simple as one being startled by the other and going into aggressive mode....