Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Wildflowers Photo Gallery

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Habitats in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks include three river systems, alpine lakes, waterfalls, canyons, glaciated valleys, mountain meadows, conifer forests, and groves of sequoias. The meadows are the best areas for spotting feeding black bears and mule dear. Bears are common from May to November. Deer generally stay in foothills during the winter and move into the middle elevations during the midsummer hot weather.

Mule deer are the prime prey sought by the elusive mountain lion. Pine martens, fishers, and wolverines pursue squirrels and other smaller animals. Black bears may take fawns or eat carrion but subsist mostly on vegetation. Marmots and pikas inhabit the mountains. Coyotes, gray fox, bobcats, raccoons, and ringtails patrol the foothills.

Rae Lakes offers the opportunity to see California bighorn sheep. Throughout the park gray foxes, yellow-bellied marmots, and squirrels abound. You probably won't want to run into one, but your adrenaline should race a little to know that the hills are full of rattlesnakes.

Decades of fish plantings introduced non-native brown, brook, golden, and cutthroat trout, but rainbow trout and Little Kern golden trout, native to the Sierra's west slope streams, are being restored. Golden trout, the California state fish, swim in the Little Kern River, Cottonwood Creek, and in other streams. The fish have a beautiful golden color.

More than 200 species of birds have been seen in the park. White-headed woodpeckers, Clark's nutcrackers, and Cassin's finches are around throughout the year. Spring is the best time to see songbirds, including western tanagers, lzuli buntings, and black-headed grosbeaks.

Bears

Before Europeans settled here, the grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) called these parks home. Today this symbol of California is extinct throughout the state; in fact the last known grizzly was killed quite close to Sequoia National Park in 1922. The savvy Sierran black bear (Ursus americanus), however, still ranges from the foothills to the high country.

Much smaller than the grizzly, male black bears rarely reach 400 pounds (180 kg) here; females may grow to 250 (112.5 kg). Despite their name, black bears can be brown, cinnamon, or blonde.

Most black bears spend the winter in dens, typically in the base of a rotted fir tree. Bear cubs are born while their mothers are hibernating. Although they are tiny, often weighing less than a half pound (0.23 kg) at birth, they grow rapidly in their protected, womb-like dens. By the time the one, two, or three cubs leave the den with their mother in April, they have gained about five pounds (2.25 kg). An adult bear, however, may have lost up to 50 percent of its weight during hibernation!

They emerge to seek sustenance from grasses and tender herbs, and whatever carrion they can find. They rely on meadow plants until berries begin to ripen. Bears are members of the order Carnivora, like their closest relatives dogs and raccoons, but contrary to what the name suggests, black bears eat relatively little meat. Occasionally bears do kill deer or eat the carrion left over by other predators such as cougars.

Later in the season they tear apart logs for carpenter ants and dig up yellowjacket nests. Autumn's acorns are critical to the bears' desperate efforts to gain weight needed to survive the coming winter. Sometimes in the fall, bears are spotted shaking down acorns from the oak trees. If the winter is warm and the acorn crop plentiful, some bears may remain active, descending from the conifer forest to the oaks below.

Black bears are not usually aggressive, and often escape danger by climbing a tree. But some bears learn to associate people with food, and may lose their instinctive fear of humans. This begins a cycle of unnatural behavior that is dangerous to both bears and humans.

Yearlings, in their first season away from mom, know the least about finding wild foods and are most vulnerable. They may be the first to become campground bears and the most difficult to return to a natural diet.

These intelligent animals identify food not only by smell, but by appearance—bags, cans, coolers, and even cars become tempting. Once one ice chest or car yields food, bears don't hesitate to pry open others to check for our protein-rich, high-calorie food. Because human foods are usually such concentrated sources of protein and calories, bears will select them so long as they take less effort to obtain than berries and acorns.