Photo by Bryant Baker Los Padres: The Southern Fringe

So if you see a bear outside of a zoo in California, you can be sure it’s a black bear.īlack bear hind paw track along the dry Santa Ynez River in the Los Padres National Forest. A unique subspecies of grizzly once roamed this area but was sadly hunted to extinction a century ago. However, the easiest way to tell the two species apart in California is to know that the state is only home to black bears. Confusingly, black bears are not always black, with cinnamon or brown being a fairly common fur color found in black bears in California. The top of their front paw prints are also arced compared to those of a grizzly. In the 1930s, the agency then known as the California Department of Fish & Game supplemented this expansion by moving 28 black bears from the Sierra Nevada into southern California.Īside from their size, black bears can be distinguished from grizzlies by their prominent ears, lack of a mid-shoulder hump, and shorter claws. As grizzlies were hunted to extinction in California in the early 1900s, black bears gradually moved into former grizzly habitat along the central coast. The smallest of the three bear species in North America, black bears are more widespread than their grizzly and polar bear cousins but are still considered rare and threatened in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Florida. Staging a remarkable comeback over the last century, black bear populations are on the rise in many areas. But by 1900, agricultural and urban development coupled with intensive hunting eliminated black bears from most of the United States. Photo courtesy Millennium Twain.īlack bears are an enduring symbol of North America’s wild forests, once roaming across nearly every wooded area of the continent. Black bear perching on a rock in the Santa Ynez Mountains.

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