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Lawmakers want to bring California grizzly bears back to our state 100 years after they were presumed extinct.
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Or rather, they want to “develop a roadmap that evaluates whether and under what conditions, reintroduction of the grizzly bear is feasible and advisable.” That’s according to an analysis of the grizzly repopulation idea by the Assembly Committee on Appropriations, which will consider it on Thursday.
That’s not the setup for a joke, though it may end up a tragic punchline.
SB 1305, authored by state Sen. Laura Richardson, D-San Pedro, would task the Department of Fish and Wildlife with studying the “possibility of the grizzly’s reintroduction.”
The grizzly is important enough to California’s history that it’s immortalized on the state flag and some environmental groups and Native American tribes are pushing for the reintroduction in order to right what they see as a historical wrong. Doing so would reunite the tribes with a “relative,” as well as benefiting California’s ecosystems.
The fiscal impact of this bill, as confirmed by the Legislature, would be $5.2 million for fiscal year 2027-28 and $4.4 million for the year after that in order to fund 15 permanent state positions, including environmental scientists, analysts and data specialists, among others. It would also pay for grizzly bear traps and high-frequency tracking equipment.
In case you were wondering, California grizzlies (Ursus arctos californicus) were thought to be a distinct subspecies when presumed extinct around 1924. But it turns out California grizzlies were not a distinct at all but part of a broader North American grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) population spread out across Idaho, Montana, Washington, Wyoming and western Canada.
“This genetic continuity provides a scientifically supported source population from which potential restoration efforts may draw,” according to SB 1305.
Seriously?
Aren’t there enough real problems the Legislature should be worried about, such as the high cost of living, a housing crisis, our floundering K-12 education system, rampant homelessness and the nation-leading unemployment rate?
There is no need for further study — it’s not feasible.
Similar reintroductions have worked out about as well as you’d expect. Northern Italy revived its brown bear population roughly 30 years ago. While it seemed like a good idea at the time, the population grew bigger than expected and the move has led to at least one death, several people being mauled and, according to local farmers, livestock attacks being common.
In Yellowstone, wolves were reintroduced in 1995 in an effort to restore the ecosystem, and grizzlies recovered alongside them. Twenty years later, the ecosystem hadn’t been restored, the changes were more complicated than predicted, and, of course, a few people have since been killed by the bears.
People dying. That should be the big concern.
Hikers getting mauled on the John Muir Trail, families terrorized in Mendocino, grizzlies stalking the Outlets at Tejon – again, not worth it. California is home to nearly 40 million people and dropping in a few grizzlies is the setting to a futuristic game show about survival, not a scenario to be tried in real life.
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Maybe Sen. Richardson doesn’t think that’s a big deal, but perhaps she would feel differently if there were grizzlies near where she lives. Also, why is someone from Southern California pushing for this? This has nothing to do with her and her district.
“It won’t impact (Richardson) except for the fact that she wants to be able to say she can go out there and see a grizzly bear someday,” Kern County rancher Jack Levars told KVPR, the public radio station in Fresno and Bakersfield.
Levars makes a great point, so maybe we should study placing bears near Sen. Richardson’s home. I’m not advocating violence. I’m saying that releasing grizzly bears near humans is akin to advocating violence. She should lead by example.
Are grizzly attacks relatively rare? Sure. But if you’re camping and suddenly become Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in a reenactment of The Revenant, once is too often.
It’s one thing to coexist with animals that are here, but quite another when you actually bring the animals back to satisfy some misguided sense of nostalgia.
Speaking in favor of the bill — yes, in favor, not a typo — Sen. Henry Stern, D-Los Angeles, said that his neighbor had been attacked by a mountain lion, but that was all just a part of the “beauty” of living in California.
“I think it makes us more human to have wildness in our lives,” Stern said recently during a legislative committee meeting.
I wonder if Stern’s neighbor agrees! We can add the senator’s backyard to the list of test sites.
This idea has been around for a few years, but for some reason it has now passed multiple committees and the Senate floor and will be considered on Thursday by the Assembly. Back in 2023, Jordan Traverso, a state spokesperson, noted that California was already struggling to deal with the predators it has now, and bringing in another did not make sense.
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“Why do this now?” Traverso asked.
Great question.
This story was originally published August 11, 2026 at 5:00 AM.