This year marks a somber milestone for California's biodiversity—the 100th anniversary of the last known sighting of a grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) in the wild in the state.
It was October of 1989, and Santa Cruz City Councilmember John Laird was sitting at his desk in the Loma Prieta earthquake-battered downtown, somewhere amid a four-day power outage.