I love the Tierpark, but these sun bear enclosures are fairly hard to defend. And to think they once had great apes in there! Blimey.
There has been a lot of discussion about the sun bear cages at the Berlin Tierpark, but are these atrocities really possible to debate? They are poor examples of exhibitry from a postage stamp collection zoo that attempts to jam as many species as humanely possible into the city of Berlin. The one and only remarkable fact is that such cages continue to exist in the year 2009, but the marvellous animal collection in Berlin would surely be better off with fewer animals and better habitats. I'm sure that 99% of the ZooChat members who have viewed the photos desperately wish for the cages to be bulldozed in the near future. Eventually these sort of monstrous facilities will be obsolete, and some zoos worldwide simply require more time and funding to become modern and naturalistic like other contemporary collections.
The weird bit is that the Tierpark easily has the space to house these bears in a huge and naturalistic exhibit. They also have plenty of room for the other carnivore species, etc.
and the other weird thing is that the bears breed here, the tierpark was the first zoo in the world to breed sun bear
When we visited in 2007, I was looking for the outdoor enclosure, but there didn't seem to be anything- just these horrible indoor cells!
So, to kill the rumors there would be no outdoors for the sun bears: http://www.zoochat.com/141/sun-bear-tierpark-berlin-60208/
