Grizzly Bears By John GurnettMarch 20/14English 10-1Essays/Butterflies Make Better Canaries

Grizzly Types and Habitat

The Grizzly bear is any North American subspecies of the brown bear including the mainland grizzly, the Kodiak bear, peninsular grizzly, the Mexican grizzly, and the recently extinct California grizzly. Specialists sometimes would call them the North American brown bear because grizzlies and brown bears are one species. Most grizzly live in North America, the places in North America that the grizzlies live are Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, British Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Wyoming.

A Grizzlies Diet

Grizzly bears are omnivores but they are usually carnivores: The Grizzly bears diet has plants and animals. They are known to hunt many members of the dear family. They are also known to eat black bears, bison and big horned sheep. Grizzlies are also scavengers they eat birds and their eggs for the protein. The main part of a Grizzly’s diet is the fish they eat, they mainly eat salmon and trout. They eat other fish if they have access to them. Grizzlies are solitary animals, but when around coastal areas grizzlies seem to gather around streams, lakes, rivers, and ponds during a salmon spawn.

Grizzly Appearance and Hibernation

A female grizzly has a weight that is about 130-200 kg (290-440 lbs.), and a male has a weight of about 180-360 kg (400-790 lbs.). A large coastal male Grizzly bear can stand up to 3 m (10 ft.) tall on their hind legs. All Grizzly bears have a hump on their backs which can help you tell whether you are looking at a Black bear or a Grizzly bear. Grizzly bears hibernate for 5-7 months every year. The grizzly is nicknamed the silvertip bear because of its silvery, grizzled sheen in its fur.

Grizzly Mothers

About every other year while the bears are hibernating the female (sows) bears give birth to their cubs. During this time the cubs live off of their mother’s milk until spring when they are introduced to solid foods but still drink milk.

The cubs are about 1 lb. (500 grams) when they are born.

Cubs gain weight rapidly in the time spent with their mother, they can gain up to 99 lbs. in the first two years.

What is causing Grizzly bears to go extinct?

The main cause of the decline in Grizzly bear population is caused by the increasing rates in human-caused mortality, the decrease in the amount of habitat and the current increase in human activity where Grizzly bears treat as their homes which makes Grizzly bears leave. Over 90% of Grizzly bears death are caused by humans.

Many Grizzly bears deaths are caused by a hunter who shoot a Grizzly bear because they mistaken it for a Black bear.

Ways you help the Grizzly bears from going extinct

There is many ways people can help save the Grizzly bears in the world today, some of the ways we can help are:

You can support a habitat because in one habitat there is more then just Grizzly bears that are endangered. This can be done by giving money to protect wildlife.

You can also adopt a Grizzly bear.

Join a Wildlife volunteer group.

Get the politicians and people in the community involved.

Other ways you could help is by not eating so much salmon so that the grizzlies have plenty of food to eat.

Drive less because it will produce less emissions and then less global warming and less pine beetles and more trees for grizzly bears

Helping in the Bear Country

Grizzly bears are at risk of been endangered even in bear countries, some ways to help:

The defenders of wildlife recommend that people put protective barriers around their live stock such as electric fences. Communities should strive to get bear resistant dumpsters.

You can download maps of the Northern Rockies Proactive Grizzly Bear project, to see what you can do to get involved.

Bibliography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_bear

http://www.brownbear.org/endangeredbears.htm

http://www.sierraclub.ca/en/action-grizzly-bear/our-threatened-grizzly

http://animal.discovery.com/endangered-species/grizzly-bears-need-help.htm

http://www.defenders.org/grizzly-bear/how-you-can-help

Google images: Grizzly bears