CaseAgainstMMCapt.#74 final - Marine Connection

suggestion is that animals must be protected from the
very surroundings that sustain them. This misrepresentation
of the natural environment as threatening to the
health of these animals will certainly not encourage
people to protect, respect, or understand the animals’
natural habitat. Moreover, to suggest that the lives of
polar bears are better because they have been spared—
or in truth prevented—from having to do exactly what
evolution has shaped them to do is absurd.
The specialized needs and reproductive behavior of polar
bear mothers and cubs—such as denning, in which
female polar bears build dens out of ice and snow in
which to give birth and protect their young for the first
few months of their lives—are difficult to accommodate
in captivity. Polar bears are routinely maintained in small
concrete enclosures with tiny freshwater pools. 112 Being
exposed to hot, temperate-clime summers and sharing
the same space with the same few bears for life expose
polar bears to a set of physical and psychological stresses
with which they are poorly equipped to cope—an issue
that even the captive display industry recognizes. 113
Moreover, as mentioned above, the development of
stereotypical behaviors is often found in these large
carnivores when in captivity. The conditions in which
captive polar bears are maintained around the world
are often woefully inadequate. 114
The behavior and physiology of polar bears are ideally
suited to their vast and rugged Arctic habitat. These
adaptations become burdens in captivity. Photo: WSPA
The slow-moving, herbivorous manatee may be the only
marine mammal whose needs can be adequately met in
captivity. However, it is an endangered species and breeds
well in the wild—its primary conservation need is
protected habitat.
The Canadian government has been involved in a
controversial trade in wild-caught adult polar bears
and cubs, primarily from Manitoba, to captive facilities
worldwide. In 1995, the Wildlife Branch of Manitoba
Natural Resources exported two polar bear cubs to a zoo
in Thailand. This brought international attention to a
government department that was found to have traded
more than 30 polar bears to a number of zoos. The
animals traded were primarily adult “nuisance” bears—
bears who repeatedly come close to towns and human
habitation—and orphaned bear cubs—orphaned
when their mothers were shot in hunts, in self-defense,
or as nuisances. 115
Inspections of the receiving zoos showed that conditions
at many of them were very poor, and often dire.
For example, Aso Bear Park in Japan had 73 bears kept
in underground cells only one meter by two meters in
size. Its enclosures for the polar bears it received from
Manitoba were hardly better: an eight-square-meter
concrete cage for two animals. Dublin Zoo, which also
received Manitoba bears, provided a larger but still
wholly inadequate space—310 square meters for two
bears. In contrast, Sweden’s 1982 space requirement for
two adult polar bears was approximately 1,200 square
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