Bears in captivity — including in zoos, bile farms, roadside attractions, and sanctuaries — face profound welfare challenges, and the standards governing their care vary enormously across contexts.
Bears require enormous physical spaces, complex environments, and opportunities for natural behaviors including foraging, denning, climbing, and swimming. Bile farm bears live in conditions of extreme suffering: permanent catheter insertion, chronic infection, restrictive cages preventing all natural movement, and psychological torment from ongoing pain and confinement. Even well-intentioned small-scale captivity — roadside attractions, private ownership — typically fails to meet bears minimum space and enrichment needs. The welfare bar for ethical bear captivity is high: accredited sanctuaries and zoological facilities with large naturalistic habitats, species-appropriate enrichment, and professional behavioral management represent the minimum standard for bears who cannot be returned to the wild.