Another Kind of Forest Monarch

The last California grizzly bear to live in San Francisco stands inside a tinted glass case at the California Academy of Sciences, a tragic reminder of a species that humans extinguished.

The dark brown bear named Monarch was captured in 1889 in a publicity stunt concocted by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst and kept for 22 years in a cage. California's last captive grizzly, whose image is on the state flag, died 100 years ago this month in Golden Gate Park.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/02/MN711J9AFN.DTL#ixzz1NaBs7WM9



The California Grizzly Bear was not the type of animal to back down when approached by early California settlers, even though those settlers were armed.