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Rare fatal black bear attack & efforts to bring the more aggressive grizzly back to California
PERSPECTIVE
grizzly bear
Monarch — part of the California Academy of Sciences collection in San Francisco—was one of the last Ursus arctos californicus, a now-extinct grizzly bear subspecies. His role in California history began as an 1889 publicity stunt, when he was captured in Ventura County by order of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Named for a Hearst newspaper tagline (“Monarch of the Dailies”), the 1,100-pound bear spent his remaining 22 years in captivity on display while the remaining California grizzlies were being hunted to extinction.
It’s not exactly Jurassic Park, but there is a movement to-reintroduce the grizzly bear to California. The United States Fish & Wildfire Service was officially petitioned to do just that in 2014 and promptly rejected it.