Room for Bears to Roam

When I was a (very young) kid, there wasn't anything particular unusual about going to a major zoo and seeing at least half of the world's eight bear species.  Giant pandas were always rare - I think at their peak they were in four US zoos at one time - but most of the others were reasonably common.

Today, most zoos - even the largest - have far fewer bears.  The Bronx Zoo has one species, Denver Zoo (following the departure of its polar bears) has one species, Philadelphia Zoo has two while the National Zoo has three.  St. Louis Zoo has four.  San Diego Zoo and Columbus Zoo are particularly bear-rich with five species each, but they are something of an outlier.  What gives?

It turns out that bears are a species we've been keeping for a very long time - but maybe not as well as we should have been.  They are tough, hardy animals who handle a variety of climatic conditions, eat whatever we throw at them, don't have too many medical problems, live a long time, and breed fairly well.  Historically, I think that "can do" attitude of bears led zoos to take them for granted and assume that they were thriving when they were simply surviving.  

Bears are fairly big animals, with even the smallest species being roughly human-sized.  They are very intelligent and get bored easily, and tend to be fairly active in the wild.  Part of it is feeding ecology.  A big cat like a lion or tiger makes a kill, which uses a lot of activity, then gluts itself and sleeps for the rest of the day.  If you're going to sleep constantly, sure, you're pretty easy to keep happy.  Bears, on the other paw, spend much of their day foraging, usually not getting one big kill but feeding on countless grubs, seeds, berries, nuts, eggs, etc. all day.    The difference is like one person sitting down to a Thanksgiving dinner, then sleeping it off, to another person who is searching for a bag of trail mix scattered around in every room of their house.

When I was a kid, the local zoo had six species of bears - but if you lumped all of the space they were given together, you'd probably wind up with one, maybe two decent-sized bear habitats.  What you actually had were six small cages, none of which was really doing its job, unless you defined its job simply as "keep the bear inside."  We know now that bears - especially the biggest, browns and polars, need much larger exhibits.  Zoos have responded by trimming their bear collections to make more room for the bears that remain.  Years ago, when I first visited St. Louis Zoo, its historic bear grottos housed grizzlies, polar bears, Andean bears, and American black bears in a row.  The zoo relocated its Andean bears to a new exhibit and phased out the American black bears.  The newly freed-up space was split between the grizzlies and polars, giving them both much larger habitats.

My local zoo has pared down to two species - and even there, there are concerns the habitats aren't big enough and we are looking to expand.  That particular zoo has been keeping bears for well over 100 years - but as we find out, we constantly have more to learn about bears and keeping them healthy and happy.