Polar bears are ideally suited to life in the Arctic: their hair is without pigment, blending in the snow; their heavy, strongly curved claws allow them to clamber over blocks of ice and snow and grip their prey securely, and their rough pads keeps them from slipping. But one thing they can’t survive in is disintegration of ice. They range across the sea ice far from shore to hunt fatty seals, whose blubber sustains them. Heat trapping greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuel are making the Arctic warm twice as fast as lower latitudes; current climate models suggest Arctic summer sea ice could disappear by 2030.
So a group of activists, zoo officials, law makers and scientist have come with a radical proposal: increase the number of polar bears in U.S. zoo to help maintain the species’ genetic diversity if the wild population plummets. And in a worst case scenario, a remnant group of bears would survive in captivity. And this would be good news for St. Louis Zoo, which has designed a $20 million polar bear exhibit with cooled salt water pool and concrete cliffs covered in simulated ice and snow for between three and five bears. Its goal was to have them there by 2017. But so far it hasn’t got a single bear lined up, because it is difficult to find orphaned bears in Alaska and it is illegal to import them.
* http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/captivity-could-help-polar-bears-survive-global-warming-assault-some-zoos-say/2012/03/21/gIQAkIWFaS_story.html
No comments:
Post a Comment