World's Wild Bears In Trouble

Environmental destruction and poaching are putting their claws into the world's wild bear population, warns the World Wildlife Fund.

Demand for bear bile, used in traditional Chinese medicine, remains strong, the group says in a 44-page study titled Bears in the Wild. Poaching for gallbladders and hides increased dramatically this decade in Russia, home of the world's largest brown bear population.

"While bear numbers in Asia slide downward, animals in the Americas are being increasingly targeted by traders," says Elizabeth Kemf, one of the study's authors.

Some 62 countries have wild bears, but she cautioned that a lack of reliable studies makes it hard to put a number on bear populations. Kemf says, "we know what is in the marketplace, but we don't know what is in the forest."

The sun bear and black bear in Southeast Asia have suffered from unregulated capture for sale of body parts and for food, according to the report.

Forest fires, particularly on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, have killed a number of sun bears, while logging in the region has contributed to further reducing their habitat. The study says the bear's survival is doubtful in India and Bangladesh.

In South America, forests that are home to the spectacled bear are under threat from logging, cattle ranching, and clearance for drug crops, while the bears also are hunted for bile and meat, it says.

In the United States, extensive land clearing for agriculture and other development has reduced the historic range of the black bear to 20 percent of its original size in the Southeast.

The range of the grizzly bear in the continental U.S. is only 2 percent of its original size.

The fortunes of Europe's remaining bears vary between population increases in Italy and Austria and a situation in France where they are "doomed to extinction unless drastic measures are taken soon," the WWF says.

The polar bear is the only species that still lives throughout its original range, but could face a threat from pollutants in the Arctic, it adds. Chemicals accumulate in the tissues of the bear with as yet-unknown effects.

Climate change also could lead polar ice to thaw early and reduce the bears' access to seals, their main source of food, the report says.