OPINION: Disgraced Los Angeles politician pushes grizzly release in rural California
Laura Richardson represents Los Angeles. In an attempt to revitalize her disgraced political career, she wants to drop North America's most deadly predator into rural California.
California, a state infatuated with predators of all persuasions, has taken the first step toward reintroducing grizzly bears.
It’s been over a century since the last confirmed wild grizzly sighting in California. If the “California Grizzly Restoration Act,” introduced in late February by Laura Richardson, passes, wildlife officials would develop a plan for reintroducing the apex predator by June 2028.
Laura Richardson was born in Southern California. She lives in San Pedro, a coastal neighborhood where the median income is $95,000. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science from UCLA and a master’s in business from USC. She lives far from the Sierra Nevada mountains and North Coast ranges, two places Senate Bill 1305 posits for grizzly reintroduction, and has no apparent connection to the rural communities that would be impacted by her bill.
Richardson worked at Xerox for 14 years before launching her political career with a stint on the Long Beach City Council. From there she enjoyed a rapid seven-year rise to D.C., elected to the California State Assembly before representing California’s 37th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2013. Richardson was a prominent Southern California politician with a promising future before scandal abruptly ended her ascent. In 2012, the House Ethics Committee found Richardson had pressured staffers to work on her reelection campaign for free, violating federal law.
“If you don’t volunteer on my campaign, you are not going to continue working here; that is how I took it,” said Makeda Scott, her communications director, in an interview with Ethics investigators.
To compound matters, the Ethics panel said Richardson had interfered in their investigation, tampering with witness testimony and destroying evidence.
Richardson was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and the Ethics Committee pressed for a formal admonishment from the House. She lost her reelection bid to a fellow Democrat by 20 points and subsequently took a 13-year hiatus from public life.
In 2024, she staged her comeback: Running for and winning District 35 in the California State Senate. This Los Angeles-area district includes Compton, Inglewood, and Gardena.
Grizzlies weigh as much as 700 pounds. Attacks are often fatal. Ranchers in areas with grizzly bears lose up to 1.5% of their cattle and 5% of their sheep per year to grizzly predation, costing thousands in annual losses.
In rural California, game is sparse and poor forest management has led to massive wildfires, destroying their habitat and driving more and more predators into town. Many rural Californians say there are too many mountain lions, black bears, and coyotes already. There were some 10,000-15,000 black bears in California in the 1980s; now there are 60,000-70,000. Predator encounters are increasing. Black bear conflicts grew from 500 in 2017 to over 1,000 in 2022. In El Dorado County, there were roughly 30-40 annual mountain lion attacks on livestock and domestic animals from 2012 to 2022. There were 200 kills in 2024. Since California made mountain lion hunts illegal in 1990, the population has roughly doubled.
Coyote attacks are also a problem. Nationally, coyote predation caused the highest percentage of predator-related cattle deaths (40.5%) and calf deaths (53.1%) in 2015. Despite this, California officials tried to ban coyote killing last year.
“What skin is it off the back of some biologist who most likely came out of a California school, who has been programmed to think that ranchers don’t matter?” said Sheriff Matt Kendall of Mendocino County. “When policies don’t meet in the middle, we’re going to turn the working man into a criminal.”
On top of all this, Northern California is now seeing a population of gray wolves growing unchecked. Patrick Griffin, wolf liaison for Siskiyou County, says he is already seeing more livestock killed by wolves than by bears and mountain lions combined.
“If we’re going to have wolves, we have to manage the wild prey more successfully than we are,” Griffin says. “We have to be more realistic about the carrying capacity for wolves in this state. California tends to manage for revenue rather than benefit of wildlife.”
If Senate Bill 1305 passes, rural counties could see grizzlies added to an already unsustainable predator situation.
Richardson has no apparent ties to the rural segments of her state that would feel the impacts of grizzly reintroduction. She has no connection to the wilderness, to ranching, to the productive class. Her entire career has been taken place behind a desk in a temperature-controlled setting, representing urban districts whose familiarity with grizzlies begins and ends with the California state flag.
For Richardson, the grizzly reintroduction bill is likely an effort to cause a splash and revitalize her political career. Her constituents will not be affected if brown bears are released into rural zones already terrorized by over-predation. Angelenos will be sold a fairytale about the “enduring cultural, religious, spiritual, and ceremonial significance” of grizzlies, as Richardson’s bill puts it. Virtue signaling by afflicting productive, blue collar California counties from the state’s built-up urban enclaves is in fact our elites’ preferred spiritual practice. Scapegoating is another term for this ceremony: all the sins that cause climate change and wildlife loss and “inequity” and any other sin du jour are placed squarely on the shoulders of the state’s unseen rural minority. The people with dirty boots and callused hands, the ones who feed and clothe and build and protect America, have almost no contact with the elites who benefit from their labor. They are the untouchables, the deplorables, and on them rests the guilt of the state and the punishment for its sins. Never mind that early Spanish settlers documented grizzly attacks on pueblos in what is now the Los Angeles Basin. Southern California is not where we reintroduce. Southern California is where we discuss reintroduction.
Whether pressuring staffers to work on her campaign for free or flirting with dropping America’s most deadly predator into already stricken rural counties where she does not live and which she does not represent, Richardson, like many others in her strata, view public service solely as a means of self-service. And all means are justified toward the end, which is, always and forever, her own personal ambition.
WOW!!! Evidently you live in the city.
She is just a pig at the trough.