Start with a Bear

A vivid investigation into the grizzly bear and how understanding these mighty creatures offers the key to restoring ecological harmony on our planet in crisis.A century ago, prevailing wisdom cast large carnivores as adversaries--pests and threats to be removed for human safety and prosperity. In North America, among the most targeted of these animals were brown bears, or grizzlies, whose population decimation has made them emblematic of this fear-driven approach to wildlife management. In California, where they once roamed the land in the tens of thousands, grizzlys have not been seen in more than 100 years. Modern conservation has evolved, yet it often remains rooted in a separation from nature, a systemic opposition that keeps the wild at arm's length.In Start with a Bear, historian, ecologist, and bear expert Peter Alagona suggests we must reimagine the very heart of conservation, inviting a new framework for sustainable, reciprocal relations with the wild creatures that remain. Spanning centuries of history and traversing landscapes from California and Spain to the Gobi Desert and Alaska, this work is an epic journey toward a new ecological consciousness. It offers a roadmap for healing the severed ties between species and spaces, guiding us to: See brown bears for what they really areExamine our storied kinship with bearsConfront the bitter reality of their continued disappearanceDiscover how to integrate wilderness with human populationsAnd to heal the ties between species and spaces on the planetThrough the lens of our largest and perhaps most complex furry neighbors, Alagona illuminates what is at stake in our shared extinction crisis. He asks us to not merely manage these creatures, but to confront the profound question of what it means to genuinely share our planet with the myriad lives that still inhabit it alongside us, to reconsider our place on a warming, crowded earth.

Peter Alagona is an environmental historian, conservation scientist, and nature-culture geographer. His work explores what happens when people share space and resources (their habitats) with other species: how we interact with non-human creatures, how we make sense of these interactions, why we fight so much about them, what we can learn from them, and how we might use these lessons to foster a more just, peaceful, humane, and sustainable society. He is a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of AFTER THE GRIZZLY and THE ACCIDENTAL ECOSYSTEM.