The last Bear standing in California - circa 1922.

The fully grown brown bears can be as tall as 9 feet (280 cm). In general, male brown bears are larger than females.  A male bear can weigh as much as 600 pounds (272 kg). Females generally weigh between 200 and 400 pounds (91 to 181 kg).

The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a very widespread species, originally native to much of the Northern Hemisphere. The brown bear once occupied most of Western North America, from the Great Plains to California and from Mexico to Alaska. In Eurasia, brown bears originally occurred from northern Africa, Spain, and Italy northward into Scandinavia and eastward through Asia to Japan. Although brown bears can be found in a variety of habitats, pristine mountain forests, open meadows, and large river valleys make up their preferred habitats.

Today, the brown bear's populations that were once continuous are now disjunct. Human activities, such as habitat destruction and hunting, have resulted in extirpations of some populations. Brown bears were eliminated from most of western Europe, though a few scattered populations still persist in Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy, southern France, northern Spain, and southern Norway.

In the United States, tens of thousands of brown bears were killed by humans during the nineteenth century, not only for their commercial value, but due to the threat they posed to livestock as well as to humans. Brown bears were eliminated from California by 1922.   Many of the remaining brown bear populations are restricted to northern and mountainous regions of North America.

Saddly, people are still hunting them down as a game sport!