Animal Facts - Bears
Bears and humans
Scientists think humans evolved between 10 million to 4 million years ago and they shared the land with bears in many places. Some bears were powerful animals and ate meat, but humans were not their prey.
Some humans hunted bears for their skins and for food. But mostly bears and humans lived without affecting each other too much.
That started to change as human populations grew and people invented things that gave them an advantage over bears.
Humans needed more space and they found ways to keep bears and other animals off their lands. Humans also changed the environment around them, clearing forests, building towns and houses and growing different crops.
All over the world bears were pushed out of the places they used to live and the amount of space available for them shrank. Loss of habitat and smaller areas of land available to them has meant that some species have been threatened with extinction.
Today there are many conservation groups and projects to protect bears, encourage their breeding and to give them special areas of land to live on.
We can see bears in national parks, zoos and in the wild and we know that we must protect our environment for bears and other animals, and ourselves.