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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: June 2007

Singapore Zoo to keep green polar bears

 

SINGAPORE--Wildlife Reserves Singapore, operators of the Singapore Zoo, on May 3, 2007 announced that it has reversed a September 2006 decision to relocate the polar bear Inuka, 17, who is believed to be the only polar bear ever born in tropical habitat.

"Transporting a full-grown polar bear to an institution in a temperate country would be stressful, and carries its own share of risks, the most extreme being that Inuka might die during transportation or during the introduction process in the new facility," Wildlife Reserves Singapore stated.

Singapore Zoo spokespersons reaffirmed that the zoo will no longer exhibit Arctic and Antarctic animals after the eventual deaths of Inuka and Sheba, 29, his now quite elderly mother. Few polar bears live much beyond age 30. Intending to move Inuka to a more congenial climate upon Sheba's demise, Singapore Zoo director Fanny Lai had asked the Rostock Zoo in Germany to help her find a new home for him. The Rostock Zoo runs the global captive polar bear survival plan.

However, polar bears are in oversupply in captivity, due to the large numbers who are captured after wandering into northern Canadian and Russian settlements.

"If Inuka is to remain, we strongly urge the zoo to raise the polar bears' living conditions to meet international standards," responded Animal Concerns Research and Education Society founder Louis Ng. "The current enclosure fails to meet the minimum standards laid out in the Polar Bear Protection Act, which was made law by the government of Manitoba, Canada, in 2003. These strict guidelines must be met by any zoo wishing to acquire a polar bear from Manitoba.

"Indeed," Ng said, "if the Singapore Zoo today wanted to acquire polar bears from Manitoba, the government, by law, could not allow it."

Ng noted that "both Inuka and Sheba are still displaying abnormal stereotypic behaviors, pacing and swimming in circles," a year after Acres published documentation of the behavior compiled between September and December 2005.

ANIMAL PEOPLE spotlighted the bears' plight in a July/August 2005 cover feature, based on a site visit, entitled "White tigers, green polar bears, & maintaining a world-class zoo." The bears are green from algae growing in their translucent hair shafts.