Since the 70's, the amount of Bears kept in the UK has decreasead in huge numbers. The current bears in the UK are Sun Bears - Belfast Sloth Bears - London American Black Bears - Woburn Asiatic Black Bears - Dudley Spectacled Bears - Jersey, Chester, South Lakes and Belfast Brown Bears - Welsh Mountain, Whipsnade, Dartmoor Wildlife Park, Blair Drummond Safari Park and Camperdown Wildlife Park. Polar Bears - Edinburgh, possibly moving to Highland Wildlife Park. Leaving some of the countries biggest zoos like Howletts, Dublin, Colchester and Marwell without a single bear to its name. Wht does everyone think of the current situation.
dartmoor wp, camperdown wp (dundee) and blair drummond sp are the 3 others for brown bear and belfast for the spectacled bear.
thanks. With Marwell, Edinburgh and Chester having these major masterplans happening now i woudnt be suprised if Sloth Bears at least arrived in a second collection. Noahs Ark and The new Zoo outside Bristol plus Colchester are others to consider.
the new zoo outside bristol have european brown bear in there plans along with wolves and european bison an ancient britain area
Just thinking about what is being said in the Chester thread... What other bear species could be considered for Britain, are there any really rare (but realistically obtainable) subspecies of either Brown or Asian Black Bears?
The Pakistani subspecies of the Asian black bear is critically endangered. It is another matter if any could be obtained. As for the rest of the Ursus species, they all seem to be doing quite well, except for Polar Bears maybe.
I'd like to see at least two more collections optin Sloths and Sun Bears. Maybe Marwell and Edinburgh coud optain Sun Bears whilst Chester and the new zoo outside Bristol optain Sloth Bears.
I'd actually let edinburgh take sloth bears, they are more of a bear I'd accosiate with them. Chester do seem interested in sun bears.
I think Bears are a group which have been waiting for the trend in more naturalistic enclosures to arrive.. They are highly, active, intelligent and inquisitive and need enclosures to match. The Jersey and Chester Spectacled Bear enclosures certainly do their inhabitants justice. The only problem is that enclosures for such species are pretty costly to build properly, but I'm hopeful bears are slowly emerging from a 'bottleneck' situation. Colchester had bears not so long ago. I think they are an upcoming zoo which nowadays builds quite imaginative enclosures and could do something for bears nicely too.
I keep mentioning this, but does anybody know why the following image is on the site of the zoo in Sandwich? Do they have Sun bears, or is this just a random photo? RSCC - Animals
The website looks unfinished(there's no Adoptions list yet or that would tell you) It looks to me like the Sun Bear photo is one of their own animals somehow.
the bears arent on the zoos species list an you'd think it woud be considering what a high profile animal a bear is. or maybe the zoo used to have bears before.
The zoo has cheetah(s?) and this species also isn't listed. It is a new collection, opened as a zoo I think only last year. The photo was added most recently to the site.
I saw somewhere that all the cheetahs in the UK are the southern subspecies Acinonyx jubatus jubatus.
Plenty do I think... Edinburgh certainly does and I think there's people saying that Chester fancy a second species (how true this is- I really don't know!). Do London hope to stick with Sloth bears in the longterm or not?
Welsh Mountain Zoo have recently acquired 2 more European brown bears. They are 3 year old sisters Athina and Fivi from Attica in Athens. They have joined the zoo's resident female Yoghi who was one of a pair of females rescued from an Italian circus in 2000. Her partner Pina died last winter at the age of 32.
Oh yeah i remember seeing this notice board near the bear window, i wasnt sure if it was new or old news though..
Whereas I applaud zoos taking in rescued bears, their value for conservation breeding is minimal. If the history of all of these Ursus arctos bears were known, I think it would be better to initiate a breeding programme for Syrian, Slav/Eastern European, Scandinavian, Balkan and Spanish brown bears. Within the European zoos there is a large number of bears, particularly of Ursus arctos, of unknown origin. These along with the rescued bears - ahum - just take up space that is better suited to breeding endangered forms of brown bear. In Europe there seems to be a tendency to look at these bears as just victims and of no other value. It seems a waste of good bear .. so to speak? I think I will continue this in a thread on brown bears elsewhere.
the new zoo at cribbs causeway has european brown bears on their masterplan as part of an ancient british woodland and i believe that ark place also near bristol is looking to get them species unknown, no doubt it will be a pair!
