Streaming link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZVMVlkbTRk

Doors open at 6:30pm for a community social with beer and wine available for purchase. The presentation will start at 7:00pm.

Grizzly bears roamed the North Cascades region for thousands of years as a key part of the ecosystem. They distributed native plant seeds and kept other wildlife populations in balance. Since then, populations declined primarily due to direct killing by humans. The last confirmed sighting of a grizzly bear in the U.S. portion of the North Cascades ecosystem was in 1996. In April 2024, the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) decided that restoring grizzly bears to the North Cascades ecosystem (NCE) would be undertaken by relocating grizzly bears from other ecosystems. National Park Service Wildlife Biologist Dr. Jason Ransom will discuss the ecology of grizzly bears in the NCE, what the restoration process looks like moving forward, and best practices for coexisting with both black bears and grizzly bears in the Cascades.