Polar Bear Enclosure - Vienna 2006

I agree with Ash and Cockroach. It bothers me when some users comment on photos from Disney's Animal Kingdom and condemn all other zoos for not looking the same. Disney can spend and spend and spend. It may be the only zoo in the Western World that can do so. Almost all other zoos have to consider and count not once but twice every cent and penny. Even Woodland Park Zoo (Seattle is one of America's richest cities) cannot allow itself such luxury; recent news have featured closure of some of its houses and exhibits this year.

Let me restate about the Vienna exhibit that, because the bears were given the possibility of going up on the rocks, where they could see outside the exhibit and over part of the zoo and view the visitors, made it better than the grottos many zoos were building at the same time. Polar Bears want to know what is happening in their environment. Also, the moat is rather deep so they can submerge themselves and dive. Such simple feature of a polar bear exhibit should be something that both visitors and bears can take for granted. But we cannot, not even with new exhibits. Why? Why is this so hard to understand?

Although that enclosure does not fit modern standards, it is not as small as it looks like on that photo.

This is the mother-cub enclosure with a small pool where Arktos & Nanuq love playing very often (taken Jan 10, 2010):



This is one end of the larg enclosure with Olinka, who is listening what her boys are doing (taken Jan 10, 2010):



Overview of the large pool (taken Jan 10, 2010):



Despite the bad enclosure Zoo Vienna had 5 healthy polar bear cubs reared by their mother during the last years. At the moment the twin boys Arktos & Nanuq, 25 months old, are still staying with their mum and still nursed sometimes by Mummy! They will be moved to Zoo Hannover this spring.

Olinka nursing her big boys (taken Jan 6, 2010)

@Jola: thanks for the news in regards to a new polar bear enclosure in Vienna, as it is clearly long overdue. Your photos actually make me think that this exhibit is even worse than I first imagined, as I certainly don't have much tolerance for outdated animal habitats. Rating zoo enclosures is a subjective experience, but I have to agree with ZooChatter Dan and I think that this pile of concrete is a "piece of crap". Great in the 1970's, but now totally unacceptable.

However, Baldur, Ash and Cockroach all have valid points and often I feel frustrated by the lack of progress within zoos. It can cost millions of dollars to construct new exhibits, and even the very best zoos struggle to come up with such gargantuan funds and therefore every single zoo has its share of outdated exhibits. Patience is needed, and thankfully the polar bears in Vienna will soon be out of what is definitely not an average exhibit. It is atrocious, and so I look forward to viewing photos of the new habitat in 2014!

No problem, I get your points, Baldur, Jola, Ash and cockroach.

Just wanted to point out that by the 1970s there were at least one polar bear enclosure far, far better than this one.

I dont understand. What I have seen on this pictures , this is crap in comparison to the enclosure in Kolmården. And that one in Kolmården was build some years before! And Kolmården thought that their enclosure was too small and bad for polar bears about 5 years ago. And i would say, Kolmårdens enclosure was the paradise compared to this. When the polar bears was housed in Kolmården, they have much more water. Also, they have grass and natural subsrate. It was not so much, but more than nothing... Baldur said that the bears in Vienna had overview over the zoo, you would see the view from Kolmården! From the top of their enclosure, they could see a fjord and much more, even too the city Norrköping, some miles away.

No-one's tried to claim this is better than Kolmarden's.

But why does the existence of one exhibit that is considered to be better mean that this wasn't one of the most modern Polar Bear exhibits when it was built? I wouldn't really know if it was or not but just because there was one better exhibit doesn't stop this from being 'one of the most modern'.

I have seen this exhibit (on two separate visits back in 2003) and it's not great. But I can certainly imagine it being ahead of the game when it was built.

I did the highlighting, not Jola. As everyone sees, it was never maintained here that this exhibit was ever THE BEST polar bear exhibit in the world at the time when it was built. The discussion about this exhibit from this photo has totally gone out of hand.

Point taken.

Regarding my initial argument: "Withdrawn!" as they say in the American courts!