Grizzly Bears

Email to a friend with a personal message

Barbara J. Feldman

Adult grizzly bears (also known as brown bears) measure from six to eight feet long, and weigh 350 to 500 pounds. There are approximately 1,200 grizzlies in the continental states (where they are endangered), about 25,000 in Canada, and roughly 31,700 in Alaska.

Animal Planet: Grizzly Encounters

5 stars

Even though the original air date for this Animal Planet television special has passed, there is lots to explore at the companion website. My favorite clicks are the Tour a Grizzly ("get a close-up look at how this titan is put together") and Grizzly Chronology ("Around 1.3 million years ago, the brown bear, Ursus arctos, appeared in China.") Wrap up your visit by taking the twelve-question Grizzly Safety Quiz.

Kids' Planet: Grizzly Bear

3 stars

This single-page Grizzly Bear fact sheet from Defenders of Wildlife is a great place for homework help. It answers all the questions (size, habitat, range, population, food, and so on) usually required for an animal report. For more Kids' Planet endangered animal fact sheets , follow the "Especies" (which I suppose is a concatenation of "endangered species") link. The main Defenders of Wildlife site is also worth a visit. Click "Read More About Grizzly Bears" to reach it.

National Geographic: Creature Feature Brown Bears

5 stars

Fun facts, well-written articles, and a loud grizzly roar that will send your pets scurrying are just three of the reasons why you don't want to miss this Creature Feature site. I learned that a female grizzly goes into winter hibernation pregnant, and doesn't even wake-up when her cub is born! "By the time the adult grizzly wakes up in the spring, her baby is strong enough to follow her out of the den." Isn't that amazing? Other featured creatures include hedgehogs, African lions and emperor penguins.

National Wildlife Federation: Grizzly Bear

4 stars

"Lewis and Clark found a healthy grizzly population when they explored Idaho's Bitterroot Mountains in the early 19th century. As the nation expanded westward, grizzly numbers plummeted due to unchecked hunting and trapping. The grizzly is now threatened in the lower forty-eight states." For school reports, head straight to Amazing Grizzly Facts. Other great clicks are the Grizzlies in the Wild movie, and a 200-year timeline of how humans and grizzlies have interacted.

PBS: Walking with Giants: The Grizzlies of Siberia

5 stars

This PBS Nature program tells the story of naturalist Charlie Russell and artist Maureen Enns, who adopted three orphaned grizzly cubs from a zoo in Petropavlovsk, and raised them in the Siberian wilderness. "Upon seeing this isolated bear kingdom for the first time in 1994, Russell and Enns realized they had found an ideal place to test some of their ideas about learning to coexist with wild bears." The site, the photos, and the articles are awesome, but there is a sad ending. Read all about it in Update.