Overall, its fur is blackish in colour, though bears may vary from jet black to dark brown and to even a reddish hue.

Compared to other living bears, this species has a more rounded face with a relatively short and broad snout.

In some extinct species of the Tremarctinae subfamily, this facial structure has been thought to be an adaptation to a largely carnivorous diet, despite the modern spectacled bears' herbivorous dietary preferences.

[19] Despite some rare spilling-over into eastern Panama,[20] spectacled bears are mostly restricted to specific regions in northern and western South America.

[22] Nowadays, the distribution area of the Tremarctos ornatus is influenced by the human presence, mainly due to habitat destruction and degradation, hunting and fragmentation of populations.

Second, the transformation of the landscape represents loss of availability of the type of habitats spectacled bears need.

[29] When encountered by humans or other spectacled bears, they will react in a docile but cautious manner, unless the intruder is seen as a threat or a mother's cubs are endangered.

There is only a single reported human death due to a spectacled bear, which occurred while it was being hunted and was already shot.

The only predators of cubs include cougars (Puma concolor) and possibly male spectacled bears.

The bears "appear to avoid" jaguars, but the jaguar has considerably different habitat preferences, does not overlap with the spectacled bear in altitude on any specific mountain slope, and only overlaps slightly (900m) in altitude if the entire Cordillera Oriental is considered based upon unpublished data.

[31] Lifespan in the wild has not been studied, but bears are believed to commonly live to 20 years or more unless they run foul of humans.

[36] Much of this vegetation is very tough to open or digest for most animals, and the bear is one of the few species in its range to exploit these food sources.

[41] When food is abundant, such as large corn fields, up to nine individual bears have fed close by each other in a single vicinity.

[47] The size of the litter has been positively correlated with both the weight of the female and the abundance and variety of food sources, particularly the degree to which fruiting is temporally predictable.

[47] Breeding maturity is estimated to be reached at between four and seven years of age for both sexes, based solely on captive bears.

[48] Females usually give birth for the first time when they are 5 years old and their fecundity is shorter than that of the males, who keep fertility almost all their lives.

[50] The Andean bear is threatened due to poaching and habitat loss, attributable to agricultural expansion and illegal mining.

[52] Trophy hunting of Andean bear was apparently popular during the 19th century in some rural areas of Latin-America.

In the costumbrist novel María by Colombian writer Jorge Isaacs, it was portrayed as an activity for privileged young men in Colombia.

[53] These threats might have diminished in recent years, but there are still isolated reports of captive bears confiscated in rural areas, which usually are unable to adapt again to their natural habitat and must be kept in zoological facilities.

Their gall bladders appear to be valued in traditional Chinese medicine and can fetch a high price on the international market.

[52] Andean Bears are often suspected of attacking cattle and raiding crops, and are killed for retaliation or in order to avoid further damages.

[55] Perhaps the most epidemic problem for the species is extensive logging and farming, which has led to habitat loss for the largely tree-dependent bears.

Shortage of natural food sources might push bears to feed on crops or livestock, increasing the conflict that usually results in poaching of individuals.

For these actions to be effective, it is needed to understand where they are carried out, identifying areas where habitat protection and landscape management are realistically capable of maintaining large bear populations.

[12] National governments, NGOs and rural communities have made different commitments to conservation of this species along its distribution.

Conservation actions in Venezuela date back to the early 1990s, and have been based mostly on environmental education at several levels and the establishment of protected areas.

This evaluation showed that only 18.5% of the bear range was located in 58 protected areas, highlighting that many of them were small, especially those in the northern Andes.

[62] Due to this land-use conversion to agricultural uses, important amounts of the spectacled bear habitat have been lost.