Spectacled bears are South America's only bear species and the only surviving member of the short-faced bear lineage, facing welfare threats from deforestation, crop raiding conflict, and the illegal pet trade.
Spectacled bear welfare is shaped by the accelerating loss of Andean cloud forest habitat that drives bears into agricultural areas where conflict with humans becomes inevitable. Bears that enter crop fields face lethal retaliation — shooting, poisoning, or trapping — causing acute welfare harm to individual animals. Cubs orphaned by retaliatory killing of mothers and subsequently taken as pets suffer chronic deprivation: confined bears demonstrate stereotypic behavior, social isolation stress, and nutritional problems from inappropriate feeding. Coexistence programs that compensate farmers for crop losses and provide technical assistance to reduce human-bear contact address the welfare harm at its source — by making bear-tolerance economically viable for farming communities who otherwise bear all the costs of sharing landscapes with bears. Habitat protection that maintains forest connectivity reduces the frequency with which bears must leave their natural foraging areas.