“Bears keep me humble. They help me to keep the world in perspective and to understand where I fit on the spectrum of life. We need to preserve the wilderness and its monarchs for ourselves, and for the dreams of children. We should fight for these things as if our life depended upon it, because it does.”
- Wayne Lynch, Author
Bears.
Learn About the World’s Bears:
There are eight different species of bears in the world, with habitats ranging from the very top of the globe in the Arctic, all the way to below the equator in South America. Of the eight, six are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as vulnerable with populations declining.
Read below about each subspecies to learn about the threats they face in the wild, as well as how humans are impacting their status, both good and bad. Bears are essential components in their diverse ecosystems, and there are numerous ways you can make an impact on their continued survival, simply through learning a little more about how our everyday choices — from the type of groceries we purchase to the way we eliminate our garbage — can affect the lives of our ursine friends. What are the Bear Necessities?…
Polar Bear
Ursus maritimus
As the largest species of both bear and land carnivore, the polar bear has few natural predators. In fact, the biggest threat this animal encounters isn’t even one it can fight. At a large male’s full maturation, its over 1,300-lb, 10-ft tall frame with razor sharp claws and canines can’t combat an invisible enemy. As climate change continues to heat the ocean and melt the Arctic’s sea ice — a polar bear’s essential hunting ground — opportunities to find food become more scarce.
Every part of a polar bear’s body is well-adapted for the harsh cold of the Arctic. Their double-layer of thick fur helps keep them so insulated that nearly no body heat escapes. In addition to the fur, these bears have a 4-inch layer of body fat to keep them warm. Their enormous paws have a thick padding with special traction that evenly distributes their weight and grips the ground as they walk across the sea ice. And with extra fur between the toes and that padding, their feet can stay warm.
Brown Bear
Ursus arctos
Though most subspecies of brown bear are considered stable, a few subspecies have a much dire conservation status rating by the IUCN. Himalayan brown bears are Critically Endangered, with population fragmentation and habitat loss due to human activity as their biggest threat. These bears are also poached for their fur and other body parts to be sold in the illegal wildlife trade. Another subspecies, the European brown bear faces similar threats, with their populations also fragmented due to habitat loss. This subspecies is listed as Endangered by the IUCN.
In North America, brown bears are found in western Canada, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Wyoming, with the largest populations residing in Alaska and Yellowstone National Park. These two groups are further divided into distinct subspecies. Alaskan brown bears — also called coastal brown bears — are much larger than the average grizzly bear, which is name used for brown bears found inland. Kodiak bears are found only on the Kodiak Islands of Alaska.
Black Bear
Ursus americanus
American black bears are the most widely distributed of all the bears, and several subspecies endemic to certain regions exist; for example, the Kermode or Spirit Bear of the central coast of British Columbia that have a recessive gene which gives some of these bears a white or cream color, the Glacier or blue bears that live in southeastern Alaska that sport a silvery gray-blue coat, and the Eastern black bears who sometimes have cinnamon-colored fur.
These bears have as wide a range of diet as they do distribution. All black bears are omnivorous — meaning they eat plants and meat — but depending on their location, some of them will favor more fruits, honey, and nuts while the black bears living more north might consume a variety of fish, deer, eggs, insects, and other meat. Unfortunately, they will also eat garbage, and a large threat these bears face is coexisting with humans — when bears get into garbage and continue to return to locations where food reward exists, they become nuisance bears and may have to be relocated or destroyed.
Andean Bear
Tremarctos ornatus
Andean bears, also known as Spectacled bears for the way their tan facial markings appear to give them eyeglasses, is the only bear found in South America. They live along the Andes and surrounding mountains, and are the most arboreal of all the bear species — they spend a lot of their time up in the trees to reach food sources and sleep in nests they’ve built. As such, deforestation, along with mining and urban development are the biggest threats to this species’ survival in the wild. Human-wildlife conflicts also occurs when farmers kill these bears for raiding their crops.
Because Andean bears are built for life in the trees, their sharp claws and longer front legs are well adapted for quick climbing. They build nests or tree platforms, constructed from branches and leaves, in order to rest or sleep in. They’re incredibly patient, and have even been known to hang around their tree platform for days waiting for fruit to ripen. These bears, though omnivores, typically have a diet consisting mostly of plants such as bromeliads, palms, and especially fruit. They are essential for their ecosystems because the seeds they excrete from the fruit they eat help produce the next generation of trees.
Asiatic Black Bear
Ursus thibetanus
Asiatic black bears — sometimes called Moon bears for the white crescent patch on their chests — face constant illegal exploitation for their bile, which has been used in traditional medicine practices in East Asia for over a thousand years to treat liver and gallbladder issues. The bears are kept in tiny cages with no flooring or bedding and hooked up to a catheter and pump, oftentimes without anesthesia, and the bile is extracted from their gallbladders. Despite outlawing the practice, and a synthetic alternative introduced in the 1950s, bear bile farms still exist today.
Sun Bear
Helarctos Malayanus
Opposite the polar bear, sun bears are the smallest of the eight bear species, and can be found with two distinct subspecies in the rainforests of the Malayan Peninsula. They face the extreme threat of palm oil farm expansion into their native habitat. Large palm oil companies have destroyed large swaths of land that is home to these bears, as well as other endangered species like tigers, rhinos, and orangutans. Palm oil can be found in over 50% of products in the U.S. alone, such as food, hair products and other cosmetics, baby formula, and much more.
Sun bears may be small, but they are equipped with the longest tongues of all the bears. At nearly ten inches long and rather slender, their tongues are built to aid in acquiring their two favorite snacks: termites and honey or sap. They can rip into hives with their long, sharp claws to get to the delicious treat, and their fur and skin are thick enough to protect them from angry bees.
Sloth Bear
Melursus ursinus
Over half of a sloth bear’s diet consists of ants and termites. In fact, these bears are missing their top two front incisor teeth, which makes it easy to suck up their most desired prey from a termite mound like a vacuum. Because climate change has caused changes in rainfall patterns across their native rainforests, the distribution of the plants and insects that make up their diet is also affected, thus making climate change one of the biggest threat to this species’ survival.
Sloth bear mothers transport their cubs on their back, more so than any other bear species, and have even been documented fighting off tigers while the cubs cling to their mother’s back. Tigers, aside from humans, are the only natural predators of the sloth bear, though the aggressive nature of these animals, combined with their extra sharp claws and thick, shaggy fur, make them a formidable foe and most tigers give them a wide berth.
Giant Panda
Ailuropoda Melanoleuca
Infrastructure development, agricultural expansion, and deforestation are the main drivers behind the decline in giant panda numbers. As their habitat is cleared for urban development, the already low population gets fragmented, and isolated populations can suffer from inbreeding, ultimately forcing the species closer to extinction. Combined with climate change, which is quickly making their bamboo habitats unsuitable living environments, pandas could face extinction within the next hundred years. Bamboo naturally dies off every 40-100 years, so the bears must follow it where it grows.
Pandas are considered umbrella species — meaning that conservation practices that benefit them also indirectly help protect other species living alongside them. They are effective seed dispersal systems, spreading seeds through their droppings and from their fur as they walk through their environments. Pandas have a “pseudo thumb,” formed from an elongated wrist bone, that helps them grasp and strip bamboo. Because pandas have an inefficient digestive system in which most of what they consume is turned into waste, they must forage and eat around 70 to 100 pounds of bamboo a day to get enough nutrients.