  Urge the USDA to Protect Captive Bears!  Despite dragging its
heels for more than a year after PETA petitioned it to enact
stronger regulatory protection for bears, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) has finally opened the public comment period
for consideration of this critical proposal. Now we need your
help to make sure that the agency does the right thing and
enacts stronger regulations for captive bears!  Ben the Bear
Caged  Bears, who have natural ranges of up to thousands of
miles in the wild, are being kept in cramped cages and concrete
pits at deplorable roadside facilities across the country that
exhibit the animals to generate a profit while disregarding
their most basic needs. Many bears at roadside zoos spend most
of their waking hours pacing, head-butting the cages, and
engaging in other abnormal behavior that is indicative of
suffering—all because the USDA has disregarded the space,
enrichment, dietary, and behavioral needs of captive bears, who
recent studies show are just as complex