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Sometimes the intransitive senses are not found in dictionaries. Inventing an intransitive sense in the moment, as needed, is sometimes felt as natural use of grammar in English, depending on the verb and what you're trying to say. For example, see this and this. This intransitive way of using a transitive verb is sometimes loosely called the "middle voice" or, more precisely, "ergative" use of a verb. (Note that most people have never heard of the terms "middle voice" or "ergative"; they're mostly known to linguists.)

Sometimes the intransitive senses are not found in dictionaries. Inventing an intransitive sense in the moment, as needed, is sometimes felt to be a natural use of grammar in English, depending on the verb and what you're trying to say. For example, see this and this. This intransitive way of using a transitive verb is sometimes loosely called the "middle voice" or, more precisely, "ergative" use of a verb. (Note that most people have never heard of the terms "middle voice" or "ergative"; they're mostly known to linguists.)

I checked a few dictionaries, and they don't list this sense for rear. The Oxford English Dictionary, the most complete English dictionary, devotes an entire page to rear as a verb, and does not list this intransitive sense. They suggest that only the transitive sense that you have in mind is standard. However, general-purpose dictionaries often cover specialized senses of words incorrectly. Note, though, that farmers are said to rear pigs, calves, etc.; the subject of rear doesn't have to be a parent of the animal who is reared.

I checked a few dictionaries, and they don't list this sense for rear. The Oxford English Dictionary, the most complete English dictionary, devotes an entire page to rear as a verb, and does not list this intransitive sense. They suggest that only the transitive sense that you have in mind is standard. However, general-purpose dictionaries often cover specialized senses of words incorrectly. Note, though, that farmers are said to rear pigs, calves, etc.; the subject of rear doesn't have to be a parent of the animal who is reared.

Second, when I searched Google Books, I found research published around 1960 into ways of setting up artificial ponds for rearing salmon commercially (still transitive use of the verb), which they tried to make as similar to natural conditions as possible. They often speak of salmon rearing: the job of getting the salmon to mature in artificial salmon farms. By the late 1970s, the term rearing seems to have been extended by researchers to include the maturing of salmon in a fully natural environment.

So, it appears that as rearing came to be used for commercial salmon rearing in natural-like but artificial ponds, scientists found it "natural" to treat rear as an ergative verb and speak of salmon rearing even in a fully natural environment, where the fish have neither humans nor their mothers to tend to them. Unlike maturation, the word rearing would therefore suggest that the natural places where the salmon mature are similar to the artificial ponds where they're raised commercially! The word rearing might also reflect the interest that biologists usually take in salmon populations: preserving, maintaining, stabilizing, or increasing them—not so different from salmon farmers. I doubt that you'd find rearing used intransitively (as much) in regard to the natural habitat of a species that people don't like—say, mosquitos.

Second, when I searched Google Books, I found research published around 1960 into ways of setting up artificial ponds or tanks, used for rearing salmon commercially, to be as similar to natural conditions as possible (still transitive use of the verb). Salmon farmers speak of salmon rearing: the job of getting the salmon to mature in controlled or artificial conditions. By the late 1970s, the term rearing seems to have been extended by researchers to include the maturing of salmon in a fully natural environment.

So, it appears that as rearing came to be used for commercial salmon rearing in natural-like but artificial ponds, scientists found it "natural" to treat rear as an ergative verb and speak of salmon rearing even in a fully natural environment, where the fish have neither humans nor their mothers to tend to them. Unlike maturation, the word rearing would therefore suggest that the natural places where the salmon mature are similar to the artificial ponds where they're raised commercially! The intransitive extension of rearing might also reflect the interest that biologists usually take in salmon populations: preserving, maintaining, stabilizing, or increasing them—not so different from salmon farmers. I doubt that you'd find rearing used intransitively (as much) in regard to the natural habitat of a species that people don't like—say, mosquitos.