CHAPTER ONE A GROWING POPULATION The mother grizzly bear leads her two cubs toward the rushing river In the months since the new family left the den the cubs have been eating many new things Their favorites so far are clover and dandelion greens Now the mother is about to give the cubs their first salmon fishing lesson This spot was where her own mother taught her how to catch fish several years earlier Grizzly bears often have twins
Grizzlies in Alaska sometimes eat salmon The cubs stand nearby and watch as their mother waits patiently The river roars The mother knows that sometimes salmon will jump right out of the water But she is too hungry to wait Instead she drops one of her massive paws into the water when she sees a fish swimming toward her She pins it with this simple move The anxious cubs run over She walks to the bank with the wriggling fish in her mouth She will
share this catch But it will be up to the young bears to find their next meal The Challenges Grizzlies Face As many as 100 000 grizzly bears once roamed the western half of North What's the Difference Some people call the grizzly bear a brown bear This is neither a mistake nor a nickname The grizzly bear is actually a North American subspecies of the brown bear Grizzly bears are found in western Canada Alaska Wyoming Montana and Idaho A small number of grizzlies are also thought to live in Washington The Kodiak bear is the other subspecies of the brown bear in North America It is found only on the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago in Alaska America This enormous bear species could be found from northern Mexico all the way to the Arctic More than 50 000 lived in the lower 48 states By 1975 that number had dropped to less than 1 000 Today the species has completely disappeared from Mexico and the southern United States They remain in Canada and the northern United States
