Great White Bear: September 2007

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Toronto's last polar bear heads back up north

Bye, to Bisitek

As of Aug 21, 2007 Polar Bears are off display until further notice due to commencement of Tundra construction project.

Bisitek, 27, just moved to the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat and Heritage Village to join the three other polar bears Aurora, Nakita and Nanook. Nicknamed “Bisi,” she is planning on retiring in Cochrane after spending most of her life at the Toronto Zoo.

Toronto Star, Sep 07, 2007

Polar bear lovers are out in the cold in Toronto. The last polar bear has left the Toronto Zoo and the exhibit has shut down while a $12 million, two-year redevelopment begins.

The zoo has shipped off 27-year-old Bisitek to northern Ontario, where she is to enjoy "a restful retirement" at the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat, according to zoo officials.

The move was made to allow the zoo to launch a bigger and better polar bear habitat and tundra phase, where Arctic wolves, reindeer, snowy owls and other animals would be introduced.

The project is expected to be completed in 2009."Polar bear lovers will just have to be patient," said Toronto Zoo curator Maria Franke.

For the next two years, Cochrane will be the only Ontario city with polar bears in captivity.

The Cochrane exhibit now has four polar bears at the all-season habitat, located eight hours north of Toronto.

Bisitek, who was taken by a refrigerated trailer late at night last month, had been a fixture at the Toronto Zoo since 1980.

Orphaned in the wild, she was donated to the zoo by the Canadian Wildlife Service.

Last fall, Bisitek's pen mate Kunik died and the cause of his death has been attributed to West Nile virus.

Kunik began having trouble using his hind legs Sept. 19 and was put down for humane reasons two days later.

"We will miss Bisitek very much," Franke, the Toronto curator, said. "The polar bears were one of the top animal attractions at the zoo. However, it's going to be an exciting time introducing new polar bears to the Toronto Zoo."

Zoo officials say that Bisitek was sound asleep when she reached her destination and was not disoriented upon arrival.

She was accompanied by Franke, her keeper and a veterinarian.

In Cochrane, Bisitek will be reunited with Nikita and Aurora, who were donated to the Toronto Zoo in 2001.

Polar bears rarely live much past 30 years in captivity, although the oldest in Canada is believed to be 40 and living in Winnipeg.

The Toronto Zoo has begun the search for new polar bears. It expects to have a male and two females with hopes they will produce cubs when the revamped exhibit opens in 2009.

Curtis Rush Toronto Star, Staff Reporter

Timmins Daily Press

New polar bear for Cochrane
By Michael Peeling

The Cochrane polar bear family has a new addition from southern Ontario.

Finding herself without a home at the Toronto Zoo, 27-year-old female polar bear
Bisitek now hangs her hat at the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat and Heritage Village,
where she will share space with twin females Nakita and Aurora, and male Nanook,
who is also 27.

Known to her keepers as "Bisi," they decided the aged bear should retire at the
Northern Ontario habitat now that the Toronto Zoo has closed its habitat for renovations.

For the next two years, Cochrane will be the only place in Ontario for the public to see polar bears.

The Cochrane habitat's director of conservation, Patricia Morin, says Bisi handled
the Aug. 20-move well.

"She slept the whole way from Toronto," Morin said. "It took us 25 minutes to wake her, but she's adapting well. She already knows how to shift from room-to-room."

Morin said the results of Bisi's blood work were good, a precaution taken to ensure
she doesn't bring diseases such as West Nile Virus up north.

A polar bear moving to a new location could be kept in quarantine for 30 to 42 days,
but Morin hopes Bisi will be ready to join the other three bears in the habitat before the next two weeks are up.

"We have to be careful not to let her out too fast," Morin said. "If we do, chances
are she'll just run to other side of the pen and stay away from the other bears.
Moving can be very stressful for a polar bear."

However, polar bears are naturally solitary animals according to Morin.
She said Bisi has actually flourished since her mate died a year-and-a-half ago.

The efforts to acclimate Bisi will include taking her through new routines used
at the habitat and making first contact with her peers through wire mesh.

"They need to get used to each other first," Morin said. "If we let them interact
with each other right away, the other girls might intimidate her."

The eventual meeting of three female bears will actually be a reunion because
Nakita and Aurora lived at the Toronto Zoo in 2001 before moving to Cochrane.

Bisi will have to adjust to living on grass as well - something she hasn't experienced since she was born in the wild - because the Toronto Zoo habitat is made up mostly of concrete slabs, and more snow in the winter.

She was orphaned in 1980 and saved by the Canadian Wildlife Service. Habitat spokeswoman Erin Van Alstine expects to see Bisi rolling around on the grass
a lot as she adjusts to the perks of the environment.

"At first you'll probably see a lot of hesitation from her," Van Alstine said.
"She'll be thinking, 'Do I? don't I?'"

Van Alstine anticipates a big spike in the number of visitors to the Cochrane
habitat now that the Toronto Zoo polar bear area is temporarily closed until fall 2009. As it stands, the Toronto Zoo isn't planning on having Bisi back once renovations are completed.

"Right now the plan is to keep her here during her retirement," Morin said.

"It's not good to keep moving polar bears, but ultimately it's up to the Toronto Zoo."

Photos by Urso Branco

Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050

Two polar bears on a chunk of ice in the arctic.

Global warming to decimate polar bears: scientists

Updated Sat. Sep. 8 2007 2:30 PM ET

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050, including the entire population in Alaska, because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.

Only in northern Canada and northwestern Greenland are polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the U.S. Geological Survey, which is the scientific arm of the Interior Department.

USGS projects that polar bears during the next half-century will lose 42 per cent of the Arctic range they need to live in during summer in the Polar Basin when they hunt and breed.

Polar bears depend on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals, which is their primary food. They rarely catch seals on land or in open water. But the sea ice is decreasing due to climate change and the latest forecasts of how much they are shrinking are, if anything, an underestimate, scientists said.

"There is a definite link between changes in the sea ice and the welfare of polar bears," said USGS scientist Steven Amstrup, the lead author of the new studies. "As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear."

Scientists do not hold out much hope that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other industrial gases blamed for heating the atmosphere like a greenhouse can be turned around in time to help the polar bears anytime soon.

"Despite any mitigation of greenhouse gases, we are going to see the same amount of energy in the system the next 20, 30 or 40 years," Mark Myers, the USGS director, said.

Greenland and Norway have the most polar bears, while a quarter of them live mainly in Alaska and travel to Canada and Russia. The agency says their range will shrink to no longer include Alaska and other southern regions.

The findings of U.S. and Canadian scientists are based on six months of new studies, during which the health of three polar bear groups and their dependency on Arctic sea ice were examined using "new and traditional models," Myers said.

USGS issued nine separate reports on polar bears Friday. Those included projections for one group of polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea and two in Canada that are among 19 distinct subpopulations.

They were made public to help guide Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's decision expected in January on his agency's proposal to add the polar bear to the government's endangered species list.

USGS declined to provide precise estimates of polar bear populations 50 years from now.

A separate organization, the World Conservation Union, based in Gland, Switzerland, has estimated the polar bear population in the Arctic now is about 20,000 to 25,000, put at risk by melting sea ice, pollution, hunting, development and tourism.

Last December, Kempthorne proposed designating polar bears as a "threatened" species deserving of federal protection under the Endangered Species Act, because of melting Arctic sea ice from global warming. That category is second to "endangered" on the government's list of species believed most likely to become extinct.

That action is in response to a lawsuit in 2005 by three environmental groups - the Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace - to force such a proposal from Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees endangered species.

The fate of polar bears has struck a public nerve. Fish and Wildlife officials have received 600,000 public comments so far on the proposed listing, spokesman Chris Tollefson said.

On Friday, Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.), urged President George W. Bush's administration to grant polar bears federal protection.

"This is becoming a tragic metaphor for the administration's voluntary approach to global warming," said Markey, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "Instead of meeting the challenge, the Bush administration is happy to float along, waiting to see if the planet, and polar bears, will sink or swim."

From CTV News.