Grizzly Bear - Range

Range

Brown bears are found in Asia, Europe and North America giving them one of the widest ranges of bear species. The ancestors of the grizzly bear originated in Eurasia and traveled to North America approximately 50,000 years ago. This is a very recent event in evolutionary time, causing the North American grizzly bear to be very similar to the brown bears inhabiting Europe and Asia.

In North America, grizzly bears previously ranged from Alaska to Mexico and as far east as the western shores of Hudson Bay. In North America, the species is now found only in Alaska, south through much of western Canada, and into portions of the northwestern United States including Idaho, Montana, Washington and Wyoming, extending as far south as Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, but is most commonly found in Canada.

In September 2007, a hunter produced evidence of grizzly bears returning to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness ecosystem, in Idaho and western Montana, by killing a male grizzly bear.

Its original range also included much of the Great Plains and the southwestern states, but it has been extirpated in most of those areas.

The grizzly bear appears on the flag of California, though they are extinct in the state, the last one having been shot in 1922.

In Canada, there are approximately 25,000 grizzly bears occupying British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario and the northern part of Manitoba. Combining Canada and the United States, grizzly bears inhabit approximately half the area of their historical range. In British Columbia, grizzly bears inhabit approximately 90% of their original territory. There were approximately 25,000 grizzly bears in British Columbia when the European settlers arrived. However, population size significantly decreased due to hunting and habitat loss. In 2008, it was estimated there were 16,014 grizzly bears. Population estimates for British Columbia are based on hair-snagging, DNA-based inventories, mark-recapture and a refined multiple regression model.

Other provinces and the United States may use a combination of methods for population estimates. Therefore, it is difficult to say precisely what methods were used to produce total population estimates for Canada and North America, as they were likely developed from a variety of studies. The grizzly bear currently has legal protection in Mexico, European countries, some areas of Canada and in the United States. However, it is expected that repopulating its former range will be a slow process, due to a variety of reasons including the reintroduction of competing predators to these areas, the effects of reintroducing such a large animal to areas prized for agriculture and livestock, and due to the bear's slow reproductive habits. There are currently about 55,000 wild grizzly bears located throughout North America.

Brown bears (of which the grizzly bear is a subspecies) can live up to 30 years in the wild, though 20 to 25 is normal.