Frog stories and bear bones: Unlocking the past to inform species’ futures

Before reintroducing locally extinct species, managers must understand the causes of extirpations and the conditions that supported species before they disappeared. But what if extirpations occurred before this information could be gathered? Natural history collections preserve historical information that, using modern scientific methods, can be harnessed and used to reveal historical species distributions, environmental conditions, and potential stressors. I will illustrate this with two California examples: frogs and grizzly bears.