Challenging the USDA License Renewal of Yellowstone Bear World for Violating the Animal Welfare Act

On July 16, 2024, the Animal Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) for issuing an Animal Welfare Act (AWA) exhibitor’s license to Yellowstone Bear World, an Idaho drive-thru facility, despite the facility’s known violations of federal and state law.  

The complaint asserts that for 25 years, Yellowstone Bear World has violated the federal AWA by exploiting black bear cubs, allowing members of the public to bottle-feed and handle the months-old baby bears by prematurely tearing them away from their mothers. Forcing vulnerable cubs into stressful interactions with humans causes the bears severe behavioral distress and harm. Additionally, tearing apart cubs from their mothers threatens the cubs’ development and traumatizes both the mother bears and their cubs. These inhumane and cruel practices violate the USDA’s regulations under the AWA that require exhibitors to handle every animal “in a manner that does not cause trauma, … behavioral stress, physical harm, or unnecessary discomfort,” and mandate that “[a]nimals shall be exhibited only for periods of time and under conditions consistent with their good health and well-being.” Yellowstone Bear World also regularly violates USDA regulations that prohibit exhibitors from allowing the public to have contact with dangerous animals, including bears, who are over 12 weeks old. The facility has been cited for these practices, including by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which issued “serious” violations to Yellowstone Bear World in February 2023 pertaining to its handling of bears. Yet the facility continues to defy the law. 

For much of the past 25 years, Yellowstone Bear World has also operated in violation of state law. Until recently, Idaho law expressly outlawed public feeding of wildlife, which would include bottle-feeding of bears. This practice led the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to issue a notice of violation to the facility for its bottle-feeding program, among other documented violations of state wildlife law.   

Under the AWA, an exhibitor may obtain a license only upon “demonstrat[ing] that his facilities comply with the standards promulgated by” the USDA. Yet Yellowstone Bear World has gotten away with these egregious practices for more than two decades because, until recently, the USDA renewed exhibitor licenses annually as a matter of course without conducting any renewal inspections to determine whether exhibitors met that burden. After the Animal Legal Defense Fund challenged the USDA’s license renewal process — arguing that the agency was rubber-stamping license renewals for facilities blatantly violating the Animal Welfare Act — the USDA finally adopted a new licensing regime. The new process became effective on November 9, 2020, with a phased-in implementation that requires the USDA to inspect a facility every three years before approving an exhibitor’s license, with the facility affirmatively “demonstrat[ing] compliance” with the AWA during each inspection.  

Despite this new licensing regime, the USDA’s inspections are still woefully inadequate. For example, the USDA inspected Yellowstone Bear World on February 9, 2023, even though the facility was closed to the public and is open only from May to October each year. As a result, the inspector was unable to observe the bottle-feeding and maternal-deprivation practices that unambiguously violate AWA regulations, as well as Idaho law in effect at the time. Either should have precluded approval of Yellowstone Bear World’s license. The USDA also failed to incorporate these practices into its licensure of the facility even though Yellowstone Bear World’s website heavily promotes its bottle-feeding experience, and openly describes how it prematurely separates cubs from their mothers when they are less than two months old, while admitting that, in the wild, bear cubs remain with their mother for up to two years. 

Just two days before the USDA inspection, OSHA had issued “serious” violations to Yellowstone Bear World pertaining to its handling of bears. Seven months before that, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game had issued violations because the facility allowed public feeding of bears in express violation of Idaho law. Even a cursory review of the facility’s website also reveals that Yellowstone Bear World’s bottle-feeding experience uses bears often far older than the 12 weeks allowed by the USDA’s regulations. Yet the USDA’s February 2023 licensing inspection of Yellowstone Bear World states only that it found “no noncompliant items,” and didn’t impede the park from getting approved.  

The Animal Legal Defense Fund is further represented in this case by Gibson Dunn. 

Who is being sued, why, and under what law? The USDA is being sued over its issuance of Yellowstone Bear World’s Animal Welfare Act (AWA) license, which violates the Administrative Procedure Act. 

What court is the lawsuit filed in? The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  

Why this action is important: The continued rubber-stamping of exhibitors’ licenses under the AWA by the USDA is shown in its decision to license Yellowstone Bear World, an exhibitor in clear violation of the very federal and state laws that have been put in place to prevent the stressful situations Yellowstone Bear World forces animals to endure at its facility. Yellowstone Bear World is not hiding its illegal activities, but instead flaunting them openly to the public so it can rake in more profits. If the USDA were to have conducted a thorough review of Yellowstone Bear World’s practices upon its license approval, the agency would not have been able to issue a license given the facility’s blatant noncompliance with the AWA. It’s incumbent upon the USDA to enforce its own regulations to ensure that only those exhibitors in compliance with federal and state law are licensed under the AWA.