A few days ago, on August 28, community members from Copallin (Bagua, Amazonas) spotted a spectacled bear calf among the crops, he was alone and apparently far from his mother. Copallin is a campesino community in northern Peru. In 2011 they decided to protect more than 10,000 hectares of their communal forests in the Private Conservation Area (ACP for its acronym in Spanish) “Copallin”. From then on, a vigilance committee was formed who, together with the National Service of Natural Protected Areas of Peru (SERNANP for its acronym in Spanish), manage and protect this space.

The ACP Copallin is important because 5 micro-basins are born in it that feed water to thousands of hectares of crops that economically support thousands of inhabitants of the Bagua and Utcubamba provinces in the Amazon.

So the sighting of this little Spectacled Bear was an unusual event, especially since it was far from the ACP Copallin. The SERNANP and ACP Copallin rangers, in alliance with the Environmental Authority of the Amazon region, conducted a search and made inquiries about the whereabouts of the little Spectacled Bear. Unfortunately, we could not find him. However, we alert the population about its importance and the special protection that this species has in Peru [1].

But why is this species so important?

The spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), also called Andean bear or Ukumari (Quechua word), is one of the eight species of bear that exist in the world and is the only one that lives in the Andean Amazon region of South America.

This bear is constantly threatened due to changes in the use of the territory, which has fragmented its original habitat, as well as by hunting carried out by humans who come into conflict with it, or use parts of its body for traditional medicine and rituals [2].

Currently, it is a species with a special protection category in Peru (S.D. N ° 004-2014-MINAGRI), in such a way that its illegal hunting, capture and trade is prohibited [3].

In January 2020 I had the wonderful opportunity to see three spectacled bears in the wild. This happened in the Corosha peasant community (Bongará, Amazonas), who, like Copallín, protect their forests and their high biodiversity in the Hierba Buena Allpayacu ACP. A three-hour walk uphill from Beirut populated center is Copal, a vast grassland of approximately 500 hectares. There is a large amount of food for the spectacled bears, making it their favorite place. Many tourists and researchers come to Corosha to see the bears in the wild, without this influencing their habitat or behavior. In addition, there has been identified a bear with golden fur glasses, being the only one in the world with this characteristic [4] [5].

Undoubtedly, the spectacled bear awakens many mysteries and curiosities and its relationship with humans is not always conflictive. It is important to know and rescue these experiences of communities that conserve their forests and value the high diversity found in them.

At the Cordillera de Colán National Sanctuary, where I work as a park ranger, we take care of endemic and endangered species. Here we can find the yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Lagothrix flavicauda), the moustached owl (Xenoglaux loweryi), the small deer Pudú (Pudu mephistopheles) and the protagonist of this report: the Andean bear or spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus).