Yellowstone Bear World Allegedly Killed Bear Cubs: A Behind-the-Scenes Look

Before Casey Anderson became famous with his captive brown bear Brutus in Nat Geo shows, he worked at Yellowstone Bear World. Anderson was an animal handler there from 1998 to 2002, when Brutus was born.

As Casey Anderson tells the story in print, on film, and on podcasts, Bear World was planning on killing Brutus. So, Anderson “adopted” the little brown bear cub and quit soon after. Here’s one example from an interview he did with Louisa Willcox on the Grizzly Times Podcast:

Unfortunately, [in] a kind of horrible situation, they were overpopulated. People who come to wildlife parks, they want to see little baby bears or they want to see big adult bears, but they don’t want to see awkward teenage bears. So, since they kind of reached saturation in their population, they had a policy which is legal to this day with captive animals that they would euthanize the cubs at the end of the year to keep the population the same. And, at that point, I realized I didn’t want to be part of that world anymore.

If Anderson is telling the truth about Bear World killing their grizzly bear cubs as population control, that could make their cub-killing policy illegal. For instance, “Joe Exotic” from the Tiger King series was found guilty of breaking the Endangered Species Act when he “killed five tigers in October 2017 to make room for cage space for other big cats.” Like tigers, grizzly bears are protected under the Endangered Species Act.

On national TV, Casey Anderson bluntly stated why Bear World breeds bear cubs: “to sell to other zoos, and if they don’t sell, they put them down.”

Bear World, on the other hand, regularly tells the public a different story.

All of our cubs stay here at our park!

– Yellowstone Bear World Facebook comment on a January 26, 2018 post

They even go so far as to call themselves a “wildlife sanctuary.”

What Is Yellowstone Bear World?

Yellowstone Bear World is a drive-thru zoo off Highway 20 just south of Rexburg, Idaho. There, tourists coast slowly past enclosures of elk, bison, mountain goats, deer, grizzly bears, black bears, and moose. The road loops back to a big gift shop, which customers must walk through to access Bear World’s other features: fish-feeding dock, petting zoo, bear cub pens, and six kiddie rides.

Bear World also sells tickets for cub-bottle-feeding events and cub-holding photo-ops. According to co-owner and president Courtney Ferguson on East Idaho News in 2019, it’s important to hold and bottle-feed the cubs “so we can care for them throughout their life.” After all,

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.

– Yellowstone Bear World Facebook comment on a May 26, 2017 post

As nice as that sounds, they still place the majority of their bear cubs into the dangerous hands of known animal welfare violators.

A Drive-Thru Exhibit of Yellowstone Bear World’s Cagy Relationship with the Captive Animal Industry

(The following information is based on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to various state and federal government agencies.)

Bears in captivity often live into their 30s when they’re well taken care of. Since Bear World opened in 1998, every cub ever born there would still be a good decade away from old age. How could Bear World possibly accommodate having a dozen or so new bears each year?

In the last seven years alone, from 2014 to 2020, Bear World had at least 91 black bear cubs. Yet, according to inventory lists for 2014 and 2020, Bear World’s total number of black bears stayed the same at 63.

Apparently, Bear World has figured out some way to make cubs disappear.

Cage #1: Game Farm Photography Industry

In 2000, Bear World sold a few brown bears to Troy Hyde of Animals of Montana. According to Casey Anderson, the animal handlers at Bear World would tranquilize the mother bear while she was hibernating, roll her out of the way, and take her babies.

As upsetting as tranquilizing a hibernating mother bear is, her cubs were headed to a caged life of even more cruelty with Troy Hyde. He has a horrible record for the way he treats captive animals. Three years after Bear World started selling him brown bears, Hyde had killed a captive fox, mountain lion, gray wolf, arctic wolf, and two brown bears because they “did not work out.”

After years of dozens of Animal Welfare Act violations, Montana finally revoked his captive animal permit in 2020.

His Animals of Montana business is what’s known as a Hollywood game farm. He made his money, similar to Casey Anderson with Brutus, by allowing photographers and camera crews to use his trained captive animals for staged shoots made to look like wildlife footage. His customers included the IMAX films Bears and Wolves, National Geographic, the BBC, Turner, Animal Planet, Ford, Chevrolet, et al.

In 2003, Bear World shipped off another brown bear cub to another Hollywood game farm: Predators in Action. This cub’s name was Rocky, and he was used in the movie Semi-Pro as the bear Will Ferrell’s character “wrestled.”

Speaking of wrestling, Predator in Action was run by Randy Miller, who in 1999, forced a scared Kodiak bear to wrestle a bodybuilder in front of a paying audience. The spectacle made national news and was dubbed “this Century’s most controversial wrestling match.” Four years later, Bear World sent six-month-old Rocky to Miller.

Nonetheless . . .

They’ll live throughout their lives there at Bear World. So, we bottle-feed all the cubs that are born there so we can care for them, veterinary, you know, throughout their lives there at Bear World.

– Courtney Ferguson, Co-owner and President of Bear World, on Fox 13 in Salt Lake City, March 15, 2018

Cage #2: Other Unaccredited Roadside Zoos (Including Joe Exotic’s G.W. Zoo from the Tiger King)

Skipping ahead to 2013, Bear World shipped four black bears in dog kennels to “Joe Exotic” of Tiger King notoriety. In the docu-series, you can see bears in the background pacing in tiny, barren cages.

Then in 2015, Bear Country U.S.A. received two black bear cubs in a shipment from Bear World. Less than a decade before this transaction, Bear Country U.S.A. got caught illegally slaughtering black bears and making $85 per ounce on the black market for the severed bear parts. Over three years, Bear Country U.S.A. brought in $30,000 on 44 paws, 12 pounds of meat, and 254.5 ounces of gall bladders.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services Agent Bob Prieksat described it like this: “It’s kind of like running a puppy factory, but in this case, they’re running a bear factory.”

The next year in 2016, Bear World trucked two six-week-old black bear cubs to Kirshner Wildlife Foundation in California. This roadside zoo has racked up several animal welfare violations leading to fines from the USDA. A former volunteer reported to PETA that “she personally witnessed Kirshner strike a bear—who was so young that she had not yet fully opened her eyes—with enough force to knock the cub backward. [. . .] Kirshner struck the bear many times and even instructed the volunteer to do so in order to ‘teach’ the cub.”

Yet . . .

They’ll stay at Yellowstone Bear World throughout their lives.

– Courtney Ferguson on the Mountain Morning Show, March 15, 2014

Cage #3: Traveling Animal Acts (and Possibly Exotic Meat Slaughterhouses & Fenced-In Hunting Ranches)

Bear World has sold a lot of black bear cubs to Gregg Woody, who runs a traveling animal act called Woody’s Menagerie in Illinois. For an insight into just how much business Bear World does with Gregg Woody, let’s look at 2019. Assuming government documents are correct, they sent 12 black bear cubs to Woody that year.

This movement of 12 cubs stands out because Bear World reported to the news that they only had 11 cubs in 2019. Maybe that’s why in 2020 they tried to pass off a years-old photo as one of the 2019 cubs. (See above side-by-side for comparison). They probably didn’t have enough cubs left from that year to get a group shot.

These are the 2019 cubs, but in a few weeks it will be their birthday and they will be yearlings! Then they’ll move down to the yearling enclosure in the main area of our park so they have lots of room to run and play as they grow [smile warmly emoji].

– Yellowstone Bear World Facebook comment on the above January 8, 2020 post

Veering back to Gregg Woody, he’s been cited for so many animal welfare violations that the USDA has suspended and seriously considered permanently revoking his captive animal license.

A sampling of relevant violations include neglecting to provide vet care to a bear cub with infected gashes and a bear cub who couldn’t walk. He was also caught keeping a bear for months in a cage too small for the bear to even stand up naturally.

Worse still, Woody has a history of sending bears to exotic meat slaughterhouses.

He also ships a lot of black bears to the Schoebel family up in Wisconsin, who’ve doomed bears to exotic-meat markets too. The Schoebel family also have a long track record of supplying fenced-in hunting ranches with exotic captive animals for the wealthy to shoot.

Whether Bear World bears have ended up on these hunting ranches is anyone’s best guess. But one thing is certain: for several years, Bear World has trucked off dozens of black bear cubs and juveniles to Gregg Woody, who in turn, has sent loads of young black bears to the Schoebels.

But . . .

[T]hey stay here! We consider every animal family and they stay with us their whole lives [smiley face emoji]

– Yellowstone Bear World Facebook comment on a May 4, 2019 post

Who Owns Yellowstone Bear World?

Michael and Courtney Ferguson own Bear World. Michael Ferguson founded and still serves as Bear World’s CEO. His son, Courtney Ferguson, also owns and is currently Bear World’s president. The Ferguson family made millions thanks to Michael’s mother, Sybil Rae Clarke Ferguson. She created the Diet Center Inc., which required among other things that participants eat eight chewable diet supplements daily.

Is Bear World an Accredited Zoo?

Bear World does not have an Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) accreditation. AZA zoos operate on higher standards of treatment to animals in their care, while an unaccredited zoo like Bear World only has to provide minimal animal care set by state and federal law.