San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences has recently put Monarch — the last known grizzly bear in the state — on display for the first time in twelve years.
Around 10,000 grizzly bears once existed in California — about one-fifth of America’s total grizzly bear population estimated at the time — before Europeans arrived in the mid-1530s. California grizzly bears, which belonged in their own recognized subspecies (Ursus arctos californicus), were genetically different than other brown bears found in North America, known for their slightly more golden fur and about the same size as today’s existing brown bears; the latter fact, however, bumps up against the anecdotal accounts that these “golden grizzlies” were upwards of 4,000lbs. Biologically? Impossible. For context, polar bears — the largest species of bear and land carnivore alive today — have been documented at weights less than half that size.
Our new exhibit, “California: State of Nature,” opens today! Come visit to celebrate the big, beautiful, biodiverse state we call home. Learn more: https://t.co/nK1MgmHNhV pic.twitter.com/WaxPlDN48O
— California Academy of Sciences (@calacademy) May 24, 2024
Biolgilcay fun facts aside, California’s unique population of grizzly bears bled in the centuries that followed European settlement, By 1922, the last known wild grizzly bear in California was shot and killed at close range in now Fresno County, though no pelt or skeleton was ever found. And just two years later, the entire subspecies evaporated when “Monarch,” a California Grizlly captured in Ventura County — who was caught 22 years prior and spent the rest of his life tossed around from one wildlife park to the next, at one point taking up residence at the San Francisco Zoo — died in captivity.
After Monarch’s death, the hundreds-pound bear was taxidermied, creating a haunting, inanimate homage to the last California brown bear to ever live. Now, over a hundred years after Monarch’s death, the public will be able to see the bear up close and personal at the California Academy of Science’s newest exhibit.
The museum’s new permanent exhibit, California: State of Nature, sits in the museum’s West Hall — next to Osher Rainforest — and showcases the raw beauty of four distinct ecosystems found in the state: forests, coasts, deserts, and cities. Dozens of preserved animal and plant specimens make up the various sections; Monarch is found in the “forests” subsection of the expansive display, helping also highlight Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous relationships with these bears.
“Our newest exhibition, California: State of Nature, is a love letter to the far-reaching beauty of the Golden State, bringing visitors face to face with some of our most iconic species, like grizzly bears and giant redwoods,” says Scott Sampson, PhD, executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, in a press release announcing the exhibit, which debuted on May 24th.
“We live in the most biologically diverse state in the nation, and people will depart the exhibition with a better understanding of the inextricable connections that interweave us with these myriad life forms,” he continues, before waxing about how deforestation, illegal poaching, and the climate crisis has put “many of these species on display” in “peril” — “it is our sincere hope that visitors will also be moved to take action and join us on our mission to regenerate California.”
It’d be a shame to see any one of California’s forty endemic species of flora and fauna (that are found nowhere else on the planet) go the way of the dodo bird. Or Monarch, for that matter.
Feature Image: Courtesy of California Academy of Sciences
As a native ex-San Franciscan 2nd Generation, can someone tell me what happened to the giant Polar bear which used to be in the Museum in the 1950’s? Also I remember a large whale skeleton that was outside the museum encased in large metal sort of cage, what became of the whale skeleton. Thanks so much. N. Gates