SOURCE: “Ursa Major,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 28, 1996, p. 2.

Balzar is an American journalist and critic. In the following excerpt, he presents a negative assessment of The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado.

Rick Bass is a wiry former petroleum geologist who has made himself part of a colorful clique of Western environmental iconoclasts, a fraternity begot by the late Edward Abbey. They are successful because they convey from wildness three things: beauty, pleasure and meaning. And what more could one ask of life?

In his ninth book [The Lost Grizzlies], Bass has all these ingredients, and we are prepared for a feast. His quest: Has a remnant population of grizzly bears survived in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, despite generations of effort by humans to exterminate them? Let’s go find out. And not just by ourselves but in...