- Grizzly Bear Photo - The biggest threat to grizzly bears today
is increased conflict with humans, as more people develop and
use the bears’ natural habitat. - Julie Larsen Maher ©WCS
Grizzly bears are icons of the wilderness: beautiful, powerful,
sometimes fearsome, but also vulnerable. Grizzly bears once
occurred from the Mississippi River west to the Pacific Ocean,
and from northern Mexico up to the northern coast of Alaska.
Eating a variety of foods—plants, roots, berries, pine nuts,
insects, fish (especially salmon), rodents, and occasionally
large animals like elk and moose—they are able to live in
diverse habitats including grasslands, forests, and mountains.
But human developments and activities like livestock grazing,
mining, and hunting caused their demise from 98 percent of their
historic range in the continental United States and reduced
grizzly populations in Canada as well. In 1975, grizzly bear
populations in the western U.S. were listed as a threatened
species under the Endangered Species Act