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The grizzly bear family pictured above has the good fortune to live in Alaska, where grizzly populations are healthy and stable. In the continental United States, however, grizzly bears have been fighting for their survival for the past 150 years.

In the early 1800s, approximately 100,000 grizzly bears roamed the western United States from the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast. Today, grizzlies are confined to less than 2 percent of their historic range, and there are fewer than 1,000 bears in the Lower 48 states.

The arrival of settlers to the Great Plains, and the elimination of the bison, initiated the decline of the grizzly bear in the Lower 48. As the humans settled the west during the 19th and 20th centuries, these great bears lost habitat and were relentlessly persecuted. Conflicts with livestock, and human fear, resulted in the unregulated killing of grizzlies.

The slaughter continued through the 1950s, and isolated grizzly populations only existed in remote wilderness areas by 1970. Today, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem in Wyoming and Montana support the largest number of grizzlies. Smaller bear populations exist in the Cabinet-Yaak area of western Montana and north Idaho, the Selkirk Mountains of northeastern Washington and north Idaho, and the north Cascades in Washington.

These wilderness ecosystems are some of the last undeveloped tracks of land in the Lower 48 capable of supporting grizzly bears. These large predators have a tremendous range, often hundreds of square miles, and are known to travel up to 40 miles in a single day while looking for food.

In the Lower 48, the grizzly bear was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1975. The protection of the ESA and the preservation of roadless public lands unquestionably are the reasons why grizzlies still exist today in the continental United States. Earthjustice attorneys in Denver, Seattle, and Bozeman are working hard to uphold the legal protections that enable the grizzly bear's survival, and to protect the wild lands that support them from logging, road building, oil and gas production, and harmful off-road-vehicle use.