In North America brown bears or grizzly bears are found in western Canada, Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington. Their numbers are dwindling.

Human activities like logging, road and house building and back country activities have forced the bears to retreat into rugged mountains and remote forests where they are undisturbed by humans.

Adult males weigh from 300 to 850 pounds, females between 250 and 400.

Coastal brown bears are much bigger because they feed on a consistent diet of salmon.

In the interior salmon stocks have been reduced to near extinction. Dam building in the large rivers blocked their way back to their origin spawning grounds. Thus grizzly bears lost an important part of their food source.

Brown bears eat vegetation and animals.

Grasses, sedges, roots, berries, insects, fish, carrion, small and large mammals are part of a bear's diet.

Their diet varies depending on what foods are available in that particular season or habitat.

Females have their first cubs at age between 4 and 7.

1 to 3 cubs are born in January or February while the mothers are hibernating in a den.

New born cubs weigh between 1 and 1.5 pounds.

Mothers nurse them without eating and drinking until they weigh about 20 pounds before emerging from den in April.

Cubs remain with their mothers for at least 2-4 years. Females won't breed again as long as they are in the company of their young.