Before white settlers and trappers reached the American West, grizzly bears were common throughout the western two-thirds of Colorado, from the Front Range to the high mesas of the Colorado Plateau. By the mid 20th Century, wildlife officials assumed that these large predators had been extirpated from the State, shot or trapped into regional extinction by ranchers, hunters and anyone else who felt threatened by their presence; indeed, the "last grizzly in Colorado" succumbed to a trapper in 1952, snared and killed in the San Juan Mountains.
Assumed to no longer inhabit the State, grizzlies were nevertheless placed on Colorado's endangered species list by the Division of Wildlife. Then, in the autumn of 1979, a lone grizzly attacked a hunter near Pagosa Springs and was killed in self defence; surely this had been the sole surviving member of the species in our State. However, scattered sightings have continued, even by persons with significant prior contact with these large omnivores; most often mentioned is the report of two seasoned hunters who encountered a female grizzly and her two cubs, near Independence Pass in 2006.
No sightings since the 1979 event have been confirmed by direct anatomic evidence but the search goes on by a number of private environmental groups (including the Colorado Grizzly Coalition); State Wildlife officials believe that grizzlies no longer inhabit Colorado but the species remains on the State's list of endangered species. Many conservationists are concerned that not enough effort is being made to locate grizzlies in the large wilderness areas of southwest Colorado and have lobbied the State to provide more funding and resources; State Wildlife officials, declaring no plan to reintroduce grizzlies, have limited their involvement to sightings of special interest, convinced that many reports arise from the misidentification of brown-colored black bears. For now, the grizzly bear is an endangered species of a State in which it does not officially reside....unless another close encounter should indicate otherwise.
