Brown, black and sun bears face increasing pressure from habitat loss, human conflict and the bile bear farming industry, creating complex welfare and conservation challenges.
Bears in bile farms experience some of the most severe chronic suffering documented in any farmed animal. Permanent confinement, repeated painful extraction procedures and psychological deprivation cause a suite of welfare harms with no justification given the availability of herbal alternatives to bear bile. In the wild, the primary welfare threats are conflict with humans as habitat shrinks, and the lethal response that conflict typically provokes. Supporting forest protection, conflict-reduction infrastructure and alternatives to lethal control reduces suffering for individual wild bears and protects populations whose recovery is genuinely achievable.