Grizzly Bears Keep Being Spotted Across Colorado — And No One Can Explain Why

In 1952 the State of Colorado declared the grizzly bear gone from within its borders. In 1979 a bowhunting outfitter named Ed Wiseman killed one with a hand-held arrow, fourteen miles from the nearest road, in a wilderness the state had certified as empty for twenty-seven years.

Nobody has confirmed a grizzly bear in Colorado since. Reports have never stopped arriving. Colorado Parks and Wildlife still maintains a public intake form for reporting sightings of an animal it says does not exist, complete with a checklist of claw lengths and muzzle profiles.

This documentary does not claim there are grizzly bears in Colorado. It examines the conditions. The nearest verified grizzly is a hundred miles from the Colorado state line, not five hundred. The Greater Yellowstone population is saturated at its core and pressing against edges that no longer reward the pressure. The maximum documented dispersal distance for a young male grizzly covers that gap with room left over. And another large carnivore, the gray wolf, has already made the exact crossing three separate times on collar data, walking out of Wyoming into Colorado and starting a family there before the state's reintroduction program released a single animal.
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