Should California’s Rewilding Include Grizzly Bears?

“Are there any true grizzly bears now in California?” William Randolph Hearst, the young owner of the San Francisco Examiner, asked his enterprising reporter, Allen Kelly, one May day in 1889. Bay Area papers the previous year included the headlines: “Chased by a Grizzly,” “A Farmer Killed by a Bear,” and “An Unknown Man Horribly Mangled by a Grizzly Bear.” Hearst loved these blood-soaked tales. His own paper was full of vicious battles between grizzlies and hunters—readers relished them—but many of these were nostalgic accounts of encounters 20 years before or distant reports from Montana. Did these legendary beasts still roam the Golden State?

“Undoubtedly there are,” Kelly said.