Griz on California flag, but do they belong in state wild?
Ryan Sabalow
(Cal Matters) The grizzly bear on California’s flag went extinct a century ago in the Golden State. Now, a group of tribes and environmentalists is urging the Legislature to study whether it’s possible to bring them back.
Grizzlies once lived across most of California. As many as 10,000 may have roamed before the Gold Rush. They were so prevalent that when California settlers tried to form their own nation, they called it the Bear Flag Republic.
Settlers systematically exterminated the animals, and they were gone by the 1920s, leaving the smaller black bear as the only surviving bear species.
A century and 34.5 million more people later, Inglewood Democratic Sen. Laura Richardson’s Senate Bill 1305 would task the California Department of Fish and Wildlife with creating a “roadmap that evaluates whether, and under what conditions, reintroduction of the grizzly bear is feasible and advisable.”
The measure provides no funding to carry out the study, which could be provided by a future Legislature or an outside group. And even if it were funded and its recommendations acted on, it would be several years and require help from a potentially adversarial federal government before a grizzly bear’s claws ever cut tracks in California.
The proposal’s hypothetical nature has done little to ease tensions over the prospect of some day returning the continent’s second-largest land predator to the nation’s most populous state.
On one side are organizations representing rural communities, hunting organizations and ranchers.
They argue it’s preposterous to consider re-introducing aggressive 800-pound bears to California’s degraded, drought- and fire-prone landscapes. Rural areas, they say, are already overwhelmed with conflicts with mountain lions and growing black bear and wolf populations.
“I just don’t think that our California today is ready for a grizzly bear,” Republican Assemblymember Heather Hadwick told the Assembly wildlife committee last month.
Hadwick’s sprawling rural district in northeastern California has faced years of tensions over predators, especially wolves, killing livestock and frightening small towns.
Environmentalists, tribes support
At least 40 groups, including tribes, environmentalists and animal welfare organizations, support the bill, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database.
They say bringing back the state’s biggest apex land predator would improve the ecosystem and right an ecological wrong from California’s past.
“I can see the ways in which my homeland has suffered from the loss of iconic species such as the grizzly, and that this loss lingers in our heart and in the attenuation of a millennia-old relationship,” Tiana Williams-Claussen, director of the Yurok Tribe’s wildlife department, told lawmakers last month. The Yurok and Tejon tribes are the bill’s cosponsors.
A 2025 study from a coalition of tribes, environmentalists and university researchers found that the Yurok lands on the north coast as well as the nearby Klamath Mountains and Trinity Alps could be suitable grizzly habitat.
The study also singled out the southern Sierra Nevada including Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks as well as the Transverse mountains that span from San Bernardino County to Santa Barbara County.
It estimated the habitats could sustain between 424 to 1,713 grizzlies, though it recommends bringing in a population of 25 grizzlies to start. Grizzlies can be found in Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington.
Supporters of the proposal say grizzlies would help California’s ecosystem. The giant omnivorous bears till soil as they root up meals, helping restore conifer forests, prairies and oak savannas, easing fire danger.
Grizzlies also serve as a check on overpopulation of prey. Grizzlies could reduce California’s human conflicts with black bears since grizzlies compete for food with their smaller cousins. Grizzlies also kill and eat black bears.
“The loss of grizzlies might have been one of those contributing factors to that (black bear population) overgrowth,” Williams-Claussen said in an interview.