Zoos Confront Grim Choice On Polar Bears - Independent

[hatrack]

Mercedes, the only captive polar bear in Britain, is lying on her back, playing with a broken elderberry branch in her enclosure next to the pygmy hippos. The yellowing fur on her belly is thinner than on her back, so this posture is a bit cooler in the 22C sunshine at Edinburgh Zoo. It's still too hot for her usual, abnormal behaviour - walking in a tight circle next to the three heavy logs in her pen. Perhaps later she'll practise her other unnatural activity, repetitively swimming laps in the shallow, stagnant, algae-clogged moat. By international zoo standards, this enclosure is not bad. Some polar bears are displayed on small concrete shelves above tiny pools, says Victor Watkins, the wildlife director of the World Society for the Protection of Animals. "The facilities in Japan are particularly appalling, some as small as 20 square metres." The Edinburgh Zoo enclosure is built of stone, about 40 metres in diameter with rocks and logs and the L-shaped moat. The pen lacks only three things: ice, seals and space. Especially space.

In the wild, Mercedes would be travelling thousands of kilometres across the Arctic pack ice in search of the holes where seals emerge to breathe. She might have to wait patiently for hours, but then, with one swipe of a giant forepaw, would claim a meal. By autumn, this diet would have built up a layer of fat 12cm thick, enough to keep her sustained all winter. The prospect for polar bears is of global warming reducing the extent of the ice. And, possibly doomed as feral creatures, they can hope for little by way of quality of life in zoos. In captivity, large animals, especially carnivores, often demonstrate "stereotypical behaviour" - repetitive movements such as pacing in a figure eight or bouncing up and down. Zoologists believe it's a way of coping with the stress of imprisonment. Polar bears suffer from this more than any other species. A zoo in Canada had to put one on Prozac.

EDIT

But for all their strength, specialisation and wiles, polar bears are in trouble as their habitat deteriorates. Professor Julian Dowdeswell, the director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge, says that since satellite observation began 30 years ago, the sea ice has retreated by 5 to 15 per cent. In Churchill, that has extended the ice-free summer by three weeks. And every week cuts the amount of fat a bear will have accumulated by the onset of winter by 10kg to 20kg. As females don't eat for the eight months of their pregnancies, relying entirely on stored fat, this trend could have a catastrophic effect on the species' reproduction. "You're not going to have sea ice in summer in the Arctic well before the end of the century, and some time around then you're not going to have polar bears," says Samantha Smith, the director of the WWF arctic programme in Oslo, Norway. And within 45 years, three polar bear generations, their numbers are expected to fall by 30 per cent from their current level of 21,000-25,000 bears. On the western side of Hudson Bay, their most southerly range, numbers have already started to decline, falling from 1,200 in 1987 to 950 in 2004. The threat is so great that polar bears were added to the Red List of endangered species for the first time last month.

Sir Ranulph argues that the only solution is for zoos to take on the task of species preservation. "If they don't exist any more because the territory is no longer under ice, the decision is clear. By that time we must have a supply of polar bears in zoos." The Arabian oryx, a type of antelope, was reintroduced to Oman from zoos in 1982, a decade after hunters drove it to extinction in the wild, he notes. Polar bear preservation enclosures would have to be much larger than anything that exists today, Sir Ranulph says. And the captive population would have to be big enough to avoid inbreeding. At the opposite pole, Ross Minett of Advocates for Animals is appalled by the preservation proposal. No polar bears have ever been reintroduced to the wild; they wouldn't have the skills to survive and would be too familiar with humans. "I'd rather they go extinct than be kept in captivity," he says. "What is the point of preserving a species if there's nowhere for them to go except to be driven to madness?"

EDIT

http://www.ecoearth.info/articles/reader.asp?linkid=57279

[soothsayer]

1. Keep 'em alive for the next ice age, and then they'll be fine!

Let's not be so shortsighted here.

[Warpy]

2. Polar bears here in the high desert

where summer temperatures have been as high as 107 (a record) have a large, shaded enclosure with a deep and very clean pond to swim in. They become aquatic animals in the summer, and an observation window below the surface of the water provides a great view.

It's hard to think of something that enormous and heavy not only swimming but playing a polar bear version of water polo with a huge styrofoam block, but they do both.

The local zoo seems to do best with the bears and the large cats.

I remember what zoos were like in the 50s, display cages with trapped, bored and frustrated animals. I am often amazed that the animals survived such treatment for more than a few weeks, maybe they just settled into a routine of observing all the monkeys outside the cages.

[Divernan]

3. Pittsburgh zoo's 2 new polar bears have just arrived.

www.post-gazette.com/pg/06163/697608-85.stm

Click on the link for pictures.
Zoo's new polar bears arrive and ham it up, then enter quarantine
Monday, June 12, 2006
Koda and Nuka, 18-month-old twin brothers, check out their new surroundings yesterday at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium. After a quick look around, the bears' window was covered; visitors won't be able to see them until August, when their quarantine period ends.

Polar bears Koda and Nuka arrived safe and sound at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium early yesterday after a 36-hour road trip from Denver Zoo. An array of zoo staff, construction workers and peacocks were on hand to greet them. "They are hams, total hams," said a delighted Barbara Baker, Pittsburgh Zoo president, as the 18-month-old brothers pressed their noses up against a 4-inch-thick Plexiglas window, rolled around a large green ball and splashed in a 6-foot-deep pool in a corner of their quarantined holding area.

Koda strolled around the den, tentatively dipped a paw into the water a few times before finally taking a plunge, and peered out the window at his new digs, namely the construction site that will evolve into a tundra and diving pool where, through an underwater tunnel, visitors will be able to watch him and his brother swim.At times, he approached the window only to back away slowly. "That's a cautionary movement" to see if he gets followed, Dr. Baker said. "Sometimes they'll actually then jump and pounce, like a cat. It's a normal pattern."

Koda was waiting at the door to welcome Nuka when he arrived about a half-hour later, and soon both were splashing in the pool. The holding area has a separate chamber where they will eat and a small secluded space that will act as a cubbing den when the zoo begins a polar bear breeding program. The roof of the main activity area is mesh and open to the air. "They've got the Taj Mahal of quarantine areas," Dr. Baker said.