Brown bears across Europe, North America, and Asia face welfare threats from habitat fragmentation, hunting, livestock conflict, and tourism pressure that require evidence-based management responses.
Brown bears experience welfare harms from multiple directions. Legal hunting of bears — prevalent in Russia, parts of Europe, and North America — is regulated but involves variable humaneness of kill methods. Retaliatory killing by farmers following livestock losses often uses methods including poison and leg-hold traps that cause prolonged suffering. Tourist pressure near den sites disturbs females with dependent cubs at a critical developmental period. Captive bears in bile farms across Asia face extreme confinement and repeated bile extraction — a practice causing prolonged suffering that persists despite international condemnation. Human food conditioning that attracts bears to campsites eventually leads to their destruction, making feeding prevention a genuine welfare intervention.