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Protected areas require methodologies to monitor the status and effectiveness of species management strategies. In this work, single-species, single-season occupancy models were employed to estimate the occupancy and habitat use of the Andean bear in the Tatamá National Natural Park through a nested design of 1 km2 cells inserted in 16 km2 cells. The occupancy at 16 km2 was ψ 16 = 0.89 (E.E. = 0.06), with a detectability p = 0.405 (E.E. = 0.039). When examining the factors influencing the habitat use of the Andean bear at the 1 km2 scale, the four most suitable models for calculating use indicated a most negative relationship between use and the percentage of human activities in the cell (β HA = −1.46 [E.E. 0.61]). Additionally, bear use was found to have the most positive relationship with the forest proportion in the cell (β F = 16.59 [E.E. 13.55]) and Euclidean distance to population centers (β DPC = 1.05 [E.E. 0.82]). These findings allowed for adjusting the Prevention, Surveillance, Control, and Monitoring programs and identifying areas requiring forest cover restoration. The sampling design and effort implemented is able to detect a 25% reduction in occupancy with a statistical significance of α = 0.2 and a statistical power of 1 − β = 0.8. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]