After the Grizzly. Peter S. Alagona
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even those with scant resources, to map California’s physical and biological diversity and document the changes that were transforming its landscapes. The knowledge that development might eradicate many unique species only increased the naturalists’ enthusiasm. First came the contract collectors, who gathered botanical specimens for museums in Europe and the Northeast. Then came the self-educated amateur naturalists, such as John Muir, who achieved notoriety in the state’s small scientific community. Next came the government surveyors, who sought to document the state’s resources for economic development. These included the members of the famed Whitney Survey, which traveled “up and down California” during the 1860s, as well as the Death Valley Expedition, which surveyed the state’s eastern deserts in 1891. Finally, there were the professional academics—the museum researchers and the professors.46
Naturalists played central roles in the establishment of all of California’s major scientific institutions. Californians founded the first scientific institution on the West Coast, the California Academy of Sciences, in 1853, with botanists and zoologists as its primary participants. During the early twentieth century, Barton W. Evermann, a fisheries biologist, became one of the academy’s longest-serving and most influential directors. The University of California, a publicly funded land-grant institution, began accepting students in 1868, and that same year Joseph LeConte offered its first course in zoology. Stanford University opened its doors in 1891 under the direction of its first president, the famous ichthyologist David Starr Jordan.47
It was not unusual for naturalists, who were much more prominent at the time than they are today, to play leading roles in scientific institutions. Yet their work revealed important aspects of California’s scientific community that distinguished it from those of New York, Boston, and London. The state’s new universities and museums lacked the libraries, specimen collections, and laboratory facilities of more-established and better-endowed institutions a continent—or continents—away. The California Academy of Sciences launched some foreign expeditions, but most of the state’s researchers still lacked the philanthropic funding necessary to support far-flung adventures. They did, however, have a vast, sparsely populated, and easily accessible countryside all around them and available for research. California attracted scientists who stressed observation over experimentation and looked first to the landscape and only later to the laboratory for their subjects of study. Unlike their eastern counterparts, whose elaborate imperial expeditions have become both legendary and infamous, California naturalists tended to focus their research on the region where they lived.48
This regional focus had implications not only for the content of scientific knowledge but also for the role of science and scientists in California politics. Elected officials expected state-funded universities to conduct research that contributed to California’s two major industries, mining and agriculture. Many scientists chose instead to study California’s wild landscapes and diverse flora and fauna. As they traveled around the state, they witnessed the conversion of its landscapes and the eradication of its native species. Their experiences watching the decline of fish and game led them to argue against both the myth of resource inexhaustibility and the wisdom of unfettered exploitation, which played such central roles in the state’s economic development. They soon found themselves in the uncomfortable position of asking for financial support from the state while denouncing the practices of its most important industries. By 1890 many of California’s leading scientists were among its most active conservationists.49
Conservation meant different things to different people in different contexts. For fish and game, it could refer to the introduction or propagation of species for the purpose of augmenting wild populations, or to the enactment and enforcement of regulations establishing harvest seasons and bag limits. It could also refer to federal, state, or nongovernmental efforts. The federal government started the Bureau of Biological Survey in 1885 to facilitate research and conservation, but most public programs occurred at the state level because the federal government appeared to have little constitutional or statutory jurisdiction over wild animals within state boundaries. California began enacting fish and game conservation measures almost as soon as it joined the Union. In 1852 the state legislature passed its first such measure, a law that prohibited elk, deer, antelope, quail, mallard, and wood duck hunting for six months each year. Several codes attempting to restore depleted populations of valuable species followed. In 1870 California established the country’s first wildlife refuge, at Lake Merritt in the city of Oakland. But this was an isolated event: the state had little authority or resources to purchase or set aside lands or waters for conservation, and the movement to establish wildlife refuges would not gain widespread support until the 1930s.50
The California legislature’s most important move on behalf of fish and game during the first few decades of statehood was its establishment of a conservation commission. In 1870 it created the Commissioners of Fisheries, which it tasked with replenishing and building stocks of commercial and sporting fish, mainly through importation and propagation. Eight years later the state expanded the organization and renamed it the Board of Fish and Game Commissioners. This made California one of the first two states, along with New Hampshire, to establish an administrative agency for fish and game conservation. Others soon followed, and by 1910 most states had similar agencies.51
During its first two decades, the California commission enjoyed widespread popularity. It pursued uncontroversial programs, such as introducing popular fish species from other regions, constructing hatcheries to rebuild diminished salmon runs, and educating the public about the value of wild species. The commission had an early success in 1879, when it imported striped bass from New Jersey and planted them in the Carquinez Strait. Within five years the species was appearing in San Francisco markets, and today it is one of the delta’s most important sport fish. By 1900 the commission had become a model for similar organizations around the country, and it could boast a “well-earned reputation for scientific achievement” and “great returns” despite only a “small annual expenditure.”52
The commission’s early programs may have been popular, but they helped create the context for a series of conflicts. Opinions differed about what had caused the decline of valuable species. Some observers recognized that the causes were numerous and diverse: hunting, development, pollution, the introduction of exotic species, and other factors had transformed the state’s land and waterscapes and reduced the populations of many important fish and game species. Other commentators grasped for simpler and uglier answers. California had attracted immigrants from around the world who sought work in resource-based industries and provided convenient scapegoats for disgruntled whites who were only a generation or two from their own immigrant roots. Chinese and other East Asians often took the blame for overfishing, while Italians and other southern Europeans received criticism for overhunting. Several decades passed before scholars began to understand that the commission deserved less credit than it claimed and the immigrant fishers and hunters received more blame than they deserved.53
After 1900 the state legislature began to enact a long list of fishing and hunting codes. By the end of the decade it had established much of the basic legal and bureaucratic infrastructure for fish and game conservation that remains in effect in California today. As the commission’s duties—along with its budget and staff—increased, it extended its regulatory work into new arenas and bolstered its law enforcement capacities. It would soon become clear that the commission’s job was not only to propagate and conserve wild animals but also to mediate debates about who should have access to and control over those species. This was a complex task, and the commission in California, like those in other states, often failed to promote the most equitable and sustainable solutions.54
MONARCH, REDUX
Monarch the bear lived in captivity for twenty-two years, most of which he spent in the zoo at Golden Gate Park. Toward the end of his life he no longer attracted crowds, though he did receive visits from naturalists, who sketched him, photographed him, fed him apples, or just stared in wonderment at this living symbol of the breathtaking changes that had taken place in California during the course of a single ursine lifetime. In May of 1911, zookeepers put the elderly, arthritic, nearly toothless beast to sleep. At the time of his death, Monarch was a corpulent 1,127 pounds. No one knows how many California grizzlies outlived him in the wild, but he was surely among