The colors of the flag—dark brown, orange/rust, golden yellow, tan, white, gray, and black—symbolize species of animal bears throughout the world.

[4] Byrnes' undergraduate degree in psychology involved designing a senior project about the bear culture that has exploded since the early 1980s, of which he had firsthand experience.

He thought it might be fitting to design a flag that would best represent the bear community and include it with the results of his research.

Four variations were sewing machine-constructed and Byrnes won approval to display the four 3-by-5-foot (0.9 m × 1.5 m) prototype flags at the Chesapeake Bay "Bears of Summer" events in July 1995.

The winning design (a version created by Paul Witzkoske)[5] is a field of simple horizontal stripes with a paw print in the upper left corner — a layout similar to the leather pride flag.