Grizzly bears increasingly encounter humans as their range expands and human development encroaches on bear habitat, creating welfare costs for both bears and people.
Grizzly bears in conflict situations experience significant welfare harm through capture, relocation, and the stress of navigating human-dominated landscapes. Trap captures — even when using box traps rather than leg-hold snares — cause acute stress, self-injury from attempts to escape, and hyperthermia. Repeated captures for "problem bear management" create cumulative stress responses. Food-conditioned bears that lose fear of humans must be destroyed once they become dangerous — the welfare cost of failed coexistence. Bears in sublethal conflict situations live under constant aversive conditioning through hazing, rubber bullets, and other deterrents meant to teach avoidance. Human food attractants — unsecured garbage, livestock carcasses, bird feeders — are primary drivers of conflict. Bear-resistant containers and attractant management are the most effective welfare interventions, preventing the situations that lead to bear suffering and death.