Spectacled Bear

The spectacled bear is Latin America’s only bear species and one of the largest animals in the Northern Andes of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. Despite their size, spectacled bears are elusive creatures—they mostly inhabit high altitude páramo grasslands and dense cloud forests in steep, remote regions where they are rarely seen. Over the past several decades, deforestation has caused dramatic declines—recent estimates suggest that only 18,000 bears survive in the wild today.