Grizzly bears face significant welfare challenges as their range increasingly overlaps with human activity. Conflict, food conditioning, and habitat fragmentation affect bear wellbeing and survival.
Grizzly bear welfare is inseparable from habitat quality and human-bear conflict management. Bears that lose fear of humans due to food rewards face near-certain death through agency removal — representing a major welfare failure with preventable causes. Chronic stress from habitat fragmentation, road crossings, and insufficient food resources affects bear health and reproductive success. Effective bear spray use, proper food storage, and wildlife crossing infrastructure can dramatically reduce conflict-driven mortality. Supporting intact, connected habitat is the most impactful welfare intervention for wild grizzlies.