After grizzly bears disappeared from California in 1924, people believed there was no way to bring them back. However, a UC Santa Barbara professor says that with careful planning and management, recovery could be possible. 

Peter Alagona, an environmental studies professor at UCSB, recently published a study, alongside Alex McInturf and Ellen Pero, that explores the possibility of bringing grizzly bears back to California. 

“What we’re proposing is that there are some remaining areas of high-quality, very remote habitat left in the state where you could start a very small-scale recovery effort, learn from it, manage adaptively, and grow slowly over time,” said Alagona. 

The study pinpoints three areas in California that could support grizzly recovery, one of which is in Santa Barbara County in the Los Padres National Forest backcountry. 

“That area, from an ecological perspective, used to have really fantastic grizzly habitat, and still does,” Alagona said. “The challenges with our area is that if you go outside of the wilderness areas, pretty soon you start to get into areas that are more developed.”

Alagona said that they also identified the Northwest Forest in Northern California and the Sierra Nevada range, specifically the Southern Sierra as habitats that could support a grizzly population. 

Brendan Cummings, who wrote the legal chapter of the study, said the most likely scenario of reintroduction would start with a state law or budget proposal that makes it the state policy to bring grizzlies back, and then directs the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to proceed with finding ways to do so. 

From there a handful of grizzlies would be brought into the state to live in a small, isolated natural habitat managed by scientists. 

“Almost everything people expressed concerns about grizzlies are really nonissues, because we’ll have so few initially,” Cummings said. “They’ll be so well monitored, we’ll know where they are, they’ll probably have little GPS tracker ear tags so we can see how they’re doing, where they’re going, what they’re doing, and that will inform management as things proceed.”

One way grizzly enthusiasts can get involved is to sign up for updates from California Grizzly Alliance about recovery efforts. Cummings said in August they’re expecting a California Fish and Game Commission hearing on recovery efforts where there will be opportunity for public comment.

“Because grizzlies are the state’s official animal and are just such an iconic symbol that binds the entire state together, we want it to be something that Californians get excited about and find ways to participate in,” Cummings said.

Cummings said Native American tribes will play a significant role in reintroduction as many tribal leaders have advocated for the return of grizzlies and tribes would possibly be co-managers of reintroduction efforts if reintroduction takes place on their lands. 

“To date, the tribes we’ve interacted with have been very supportive of the idea of further exploration of the possibility of bringing grizzlies back,” Cummings said. “Any reintroduction that actually occurs will certainly have to be done with consultation and involvement of the tribes and, ideally, will be done with active participation and co-management by the tribes.”

While there could be a number of ecological benefits from having grizzly bears back in California, Alagona also sees it as a justice issue.

“The extinction with brown bears was tied up with Indigenous genocide; and by bringing the bear back, while it wouldn’t heal those wounds, it would certainly be a symbolic step in trying to foster a broader healing and greater understanding of what made California what it is and where we might go from here,” Alagona said. 

Alagona has been a UCSB faculty member since 2009, and in 2016 he put a group together at UCSB to start researching grizzly bears and their history. After several years of research, Alagona realized the work they were doing had potential implications for policy and conservation. 

He then started the California Grizzly Alliance, a group dedicated to spreading the word about the grizzly bears and the policies that could bring them back. 

While the possibility of bring grizzlies back seemed impossible for years, Alagona wants to imagine what if it weren’t impossible, what if it could be done and how that would inspire the human spirit. 

“In that case, what other things that seemed impossible might become possible, and how would that affect the way young people, for example, think about what they can do to create positive change in the world,” Alagona said.