In fact, Korean tourists visit Thailand in groups to enjoy meals of bear meat and bear-paw soup. In Thailand, however, there is little differentiation in the marketing of sun bears and Asiatic black bears. It is likely that both are eaten and kept as pets depending on their availability. Little is known about Asiatic black bears in Burma, Laos, and Vietnam, except that they occur in forested areas in these countries and they are not protected there. The range of the brown bear is larger than that of any other bear species.
Brown bears occur in Europe, Asia, and North America from northern Arctic tundra to dry deserts.
Within this vast area, however, the brown bear's distribution has been significantly reduced, largely as a result of increasing human populations and habitat loss. Since the mid 1800s the rate of decline accelerated with the advent of the use of firearms and poison to kill bears. This decline is well documented in Europe, where bears in modern Denmark disappeared about 3,700 years ago. They went extinct in Great Britain in the tenth century, in eastern Germany in 1770, in Bavaria in 1836, in Switzerland in 1904, and in the French Alps in 1937. Only small numbers of bears in isolated populations remain elsewhere in western Europe.