Author’s Note: “Cubs Bred to the Slaughter” is the third in a series about Bear World. If interested in reading them in order, here’s the first post and the second.
Cubs Bred at Bear World Are Sent to People Who Kill or Have Bears Slaughtered
The following list illustrates an incomplete tally of places known for having killed or slaughtered bears where Bear World cubs have ended up:
1) Troy Hyde
Celebrity Nat Geo host Casey Anderson worked for Troy Hyde and doesn’t speak so highly of him: “every one of those animals has a dollar sign on their head. Here’s this bear, maybe [Hyde] bottle-raised and gave a name to, who really looked at him as the only thing in its life, and if someone came in and said, ‘Hey, I’ll give you twenty grand for that hide,’ that bear would be dead.”
Soon after Bear World started selling brown bears to Hyde, he killed several animals, including two grizzly bears. His reason being they “did not work out.”
2) Bear Country, USA (the Casey Family)
Two members of the Casey family, who own this roadside zoo, pled guilty to illegally trafficking in black bear organs and parts. Emphasizing the fact that these black bears hadn’t died of natural causes, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) said, “They were being harvested. They were slaughtering them.”
Bear World sent them two cubs in 2015.
3) Gregg Woody
Even though Bear World has shipped at least 84 black bears to Woody in the last 10 years, US Department of Agriculture (USDA) inventories since 2014 only show Woody ever having four North American black bears. He must find ways to make them disappear quickly. References to USDA reports in 2013, 2015, and 2017 describe his practice of sending bears to the slaughter.
Keep in mind, these USDA inspection reports do not mention every time he sends bears to slaughterhouses. This is because it’s not considered a violation to kill healthy captive black bears. The USDA only mentions the few times they’ve caught Woody incorrectly making receipts for slaughterhouse transactions, as in failing to include the name of the meat company or their complete address. There’s no way for us to know how many bears he has slaughtered.
Besides harvesting bears, Woody also has a long history of animal welfare violations.
2019-02-15_Gregg-Woody_factsheetAccording to public records, he’s also sent a bunch of Bear World cubs to the Schoebel family in Wisconsin.
4) Schoebel Family
Before Mark Schoebel passed away in 2017, he spent decades dealing in animals. He reportedly dealt animals into private auctions, slaughterhouses, and onto fenced-in hunting operations. USFWS special agents uncovered that Schoebel “supplied bears to the owner of an Illinois game farm who was charged with shooting the animals, dismembering and decapitating them, packing the carcasses in dry ice, and shipping them via a New York firm to Korea.”
The investigation turned up more bodies: “two dozen bears had also been sent from [Schoebel’s facility] to Korea via a California broker. A search warrant executed at Schoebel’s facility turned up receipts showing the sale of yet more bears to an exotic-meat dealer in a Chicago suburb.”
Schoebel pled guilty, and a decade later, according to an Illinois Department of Agriculture veterinarian, his son Matt was stopped by state police in a “truck filled with bears” close to the same Chicago-suburb meat dealer detailed in the plea bargain.
Schoebel’s wife Alice and son Matt now run the business. And public records suggest that they’ve received several Bear World cubs from Woody over the years and then flipped many of them onto Dean Oswald.
5) Dean Oswald
On Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Dean Oswald runs a roadside zoo called Oswald’s Bear Ranch. Since 1996, Oswald has acquired 86 bear cubs bred in captivity, and during that same time, at least 40 bears have died. 16 of those who died were younger than two years old.
Among the notes for premature deaths include “fall inside kennel striking head on frame,” “believed drug overdose,” “grandson fed grapes unknowingly that would ferment and cause kidney failure” (accounting for two yearling deaths), and multiple descriptions of dens caving in or collapsing.
In 2017, an Oswald’s Bear Ranch staff member (whose name was redacted in the public record), told a state inspector that a mean bear should be “harvested, and made into jerky.” While tone can be lost in a report, it doesn’t appear that this was a joke. Oswald has slaughtered at least six black bears, one including the added justification that the bear was “mean.”
This list offers glimpses into a supply chain with Bear World as the initial supplier and the end product potentially being meat, black market medicine, or a rug.
Why Is Bear World Breeding Black Bears?
With a dozen or so cubs bred at Bear World‘s drive-thru zoo most years, the question of why is worth exploring. It’s probably safe to assume that Bear World doesn’t breed bears hoping to have them sent to slaughterhouses. But since they ship a lot of bears to people who do have bears slaughtered, Bear World’s justifications should be weighed against this potential byproduct of their business.
That said, we can’t know for sure the intentions of their commercial wildlife facility. Even approaching them for comment wouldn’t really be all that helpful since they’ve proven themselves unreliable on the subject.
Black Bear Cubs Bred for Conservation?
“Occasionally we do rehome a female to other free roaming wildlife parks for genetic diversity programs in order to ensure happy and healthy black bear populations in the United States.”
Bear World Facebook comment on a May 4, 2019 post. Emphasis added to illustrate Bear World’s unreliability.
They don’t just occasionally “rehome a female.” Over nine years of records, Bear World has shipped at least 84 black bears to Gregg Woody alone. 35 of those bears were male.
“Occasionally we do rehome a female to other free roaming wildlife parks for genetic diversity programs in order to ensure happy and healthy black bear populations in the United States.”
Bear World Facebook comment on a May 4, 2019 post. Emphasis shifted to illustrate Bear World’s sustained unreliability.
Of the 10 places that Bear World has sent bears, only one of them could be described as a “free roaming wildlife parks.” And that one place is Bear Country, USA (the same black market bear parts trafficker mentioned a thousand words ago).
“Occasionally we do rehome a female to other free roaming wildlife parks for genetic diversity programs in order to ensure happy and healthy black bear populations in the United States.”
Bear World Facebook comment on a May 4, 2019 post. Emphasis shifted yet again to illustrate Bear World’s unrelenting unreliability.
What’s diverse about a program that sends 84 black bears to one guy in Illinois? Once Bear World wraps up business with Gregg Woody, those bears are now his to treat how he so pleases. He can send them to slaughterhouses, fenced-in hunting farms, or sell them to other people who then can send them to slaughterhouses or fenced-in hunting farms.
Also, Bear World neutered/spayed at least six of the black bears before trucking them off to Woody. How does Bear World envision those bears participating in “genetic diversity programs”?
“Occasionally we do rehome a female to other free roaming wildlife parks for genetic diversity programs in order to ensure happy and healthy black bear populations in the United States.”
Bear World Facebook comment on a May 4, 2019 post. Emphasis shifted one last time for good measure on Bear World’s unreliability.
Professional, conservation-minded zoos accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) participate in genetic diversity programs known as Species Survival Plans (SSPs). Bear World is not AZA-accredited and plays absolutely no role in their SSP genetic diversity programs.
SSPs focus on threatened or endangered animals. That’s the reason for the Species Survival part of the name, and it’s also why genetic diversity is important.
North American black bears, though, are not threatened or endangered. Their numbers are excitingly increasing, with population estimates more than twice that of all other bear species combined, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed them as a species of least concern. Here’s the reality that the IUCN shared back in 2007: “Among the eight species of bears, only the American black bear is secure throughout its range.”
So, there is no conservation need for breeding black bear cubs in captivity.
In fact, even captive populations of black bears in the country are saturated beyond demand. Bears, when well cared for, live into their 30s in captivity. As a zoo exhibit gains one or two black bears, they’re set for decades. And when they’re in the market for more, state and federal agencies are often looking for places to send bears removed from the wild instead of resorting to euthanasia.
As Bear World gluts the industry with captive black bears, we could argue that this practice leaves fewer options available to save wild bears from being euthanized.
Or Maybe to Allow Bears to Live Naturally?
“One of our favorite things to tell people is that our park is their house and they are just letting us visit; which is entirely true.”
Bear World Facebook comment on a May 26, 2017 post.
“Being based in Idaho we are within the natural habitat of the American black bear. We build an enclosure with massive acreage and just let the bears live as they see fit.”
Bear World Facebook comment on a March 16, 2017 post.
Bear World doesn’t allow bears to live naturally. They make more than 60 black bears share one enclosure and sterilize most of the bears, only allowing six females to breed. Then they unnaturally remove the weeks-old cubs from their hibernating mothers to use for cub-holding photo-ops and bottle-feeding events.
Bear World contradicts their own image of allowing bears to “live as they see fit” when defending their business’s most profitable practices. A go-to excuse they give for removing infant cubs from their mothers is that the males in the park will kill the babies. When asked why they don’t simply provide a separate space for the mothers to rear the cubs, Bear World offered this reply:
“We COULD separate the mom and cubs from the males BUT… then it would be to dangerous for us to do and maintanence work in that area and visitors would never get to see the cubs bc it would be too dangerous to drive though. (Momma bears a VERY protective, as I’m sure you know) Also, cubs stay with the moms for about a year and a half and the females would not breed so there would only be cubs every other year.”
Bear World Facebook comment on a April 18, 2012 post. Emphasis and typos in original.
In other words, letting bears be bears doesn’t fit Bear World’s business model.
Cubs Bred for Making Money?
In my opinion, it seems clear that Bear World’s breeding program is for ticket sales. They are an unaccredited for-profit commercial wildlife outfit that costs more to visit than the AZA-accredited Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, and most everything around their cubs comes with dollar signs. They’re likely making six figures on annual bottle-feeding sales alone. But there’s a lot more money to be had outside their $55 per person bottle-feeding tickets.
In 2017, for example, they removed all 16 black bear cubs from their mothers and took them to cub-holding photo-ops events in Idaho and Utah. Each year, these events can last days, upwards to 10 hours a day. And the cubs are still just weeks old, unable to really walk yet. Bear World charges $20 per photo.
After these photo-ops events, in that same month of March in 2017, Bear World turned around and sold ten of the weeks-old cubs to Gregg Woody. While only Bear World knows how much money they made on that transaction, we can probably assume it was a few hundred bucks per cub. Back in 2011, Dean Oswald, mentioned above in the Bear World supply chain, told a special agent for the USFWS that “the going price for a black bear cub was $500.”
(Two months later, in their classic untrustworthy fashion, Bear World would make this statement: “The cubs here were born in, and will remain in, our park for the duration of their lives and be very loved and cared for.”)
With the six remaining cubs, Bear World went back to Utah for Baby Animal Days in April where the infant bears spent four days in a small enclosure surrounded by large, loud crowds. They had nowhere to hide or retreat to for privacy. When Bear World first went to Baby Animal Days in 2010, the Herald Journal reported that they made $7,500. That price tag has likely gone up in the last 11 years.
Before their official opening, Bear World also ran a “Cubpalooza” event for three weekends where customers could interact with the cubs. The draw here is to get to pet cubs and get a “Community Card” giving attendees half off admission prices for the season.
These pre-tourist-season events are all aimed toward landing local business, which Bear World supposedly doesn’t get much of later in the year. Michael Ferguson, Bear World’s founder and owner, has told a local paper that only about 4% of their customers are from the area.
That year, like every year, when the tourists showed up around Memorial Day, they fully opened their gates for $25 per adult (ages 11+) and sold those aforementioned $55 tickets to bottle-feed cubs with slots available three times a day, seven days a week.
They also force paint onto the cubs’ paws and make them walk across canvases to sell as “artwork” for $100 in their gift shop.
Two years later, Bear World sent three more of the 2017 bears to Gregg Woody. Out of the 16 cubs, Bear World rid themselves of all but three.
Bear World Cub Exploitation Pattern
The above 2017 example illustrates the annual, predictable plan Bear World tends to stick to:
- Remove weeks-old cubs from hibernating mothers
- Use the baby bears to sell cub-holding photo-ops in Idaho and Utah
- Keep six cubs for the upcoming bottle-feeding ticket sales
- Truck surplus cubs to Gregg Woody or into the cages of other unaccredited tourist attractions
- Take the six cubs back to Utah to make thousands at Baby Animal Days
- Lure local customers into petting the six cubs for three weekends before the tourist season
- Sell bottle-feeding tickets from Memorial Day to mid-October
- Ship off what cubs Woody’s willing to take after closing in October once cubs grow too big for bottle-feeding
Due to the pandemic, this year (2021), Bear World couldn’t do their normal cub-holding photo-ops events. Instead, they offered a “VIP Cub Encounter,” an hourlong private session with weeks-old bear cubs for $1250 (plus tax).
“There is no barrier or unnecessary limitations to the interaction for you and up to 14 guests,” Bear World said in a message to a concerned citizen, “that lasts an hour in which you get to interact as much as possible with our cubs.”
For two weeks, they put their cubs through these no holds barred “encounters” from March 15 through March 28, for three hours on the weekdays, nine hours on Saturdays, and six hours on Sundays. Assuming they sold each hour slot, they made $75,000.
Most black bear cubs bred in captivity really only add much value to roadside zoos while they’re little and cute. During this short period at the beginning of their lives, baby bears draw long lines of eager wallets.
As they grow older, without zoos demanding for live juvenile black bears, and because of the meat on their bones and the fur on their backs and the sensation of shooting a “predator” inside a fence, they become more economically valuable dead.
Bear World has sent Woody at least 19 subadult black bears who were too old to use in cub-related events. Many, as previously mentioned, were already sterilized and could not be used to breed more cubs. It’s unlikely any of these bears are still alive. None of them were older than four.