The Colombian coffee growers protecting the spectacled bear

South America’s only native bear is under threat. A small group of coffee farmers in the Andes is doing something about it.

In Colombia’s Western Villa de Cauca region, Jhoan Bravo’s coffee farm is nestled in the verdant green Andean mountains, covered in a tapestry of fertile fields and emerald forests. It is a striking backdrop for a 30-hectare (74-acre) estate that has been in his family for more than 50 years.

As he moves among clusters of bright red coffee cherries, the 35-year-old recalls a childhood memory of his grandfather returning home one day with a spectacled bear he had killed. The animal’s fat – believed by locals to have medicinal properties – was extracted and smeared onto the belly buttons of Bravo and the males in the family to make them stronger.

“This wasn’t something unusual. When I was a child, hunting animals was normal around here – it was a way of life,” Bravo says, explaining that animal skins were often dried or stuffed and used for farm equipment, like horse saddles or as decorations in homes.

But over the years, sightings of the creatures – also known as Andean bears (Tremarctos ornatus) – became less common.

Some of Bravo’s family continued to hunt other animals. However Bravo, as well as tending to the coffee farm, preferred riding his horse into the forest to chop down trees and sell the wood to locals. “It was illegal, but I’d get some money for it,” he says.