North American Polar Bear Population

There are not enough pairs in the US population to go around. Plus, if they were to capture orphaned wild bears, there's a law that doesn't allow breeding them in captivity.

 

I know, I just figured Alaska of all places would be a priority breeding institution. I did not know about that orphan law, though. It sounds pretty stupid and definitely detrimental to the program. What's the reasoning behind it?

~Thylo

 

The law that does not allow polar bears to be transferred between institutions in the US and Canada needs to be fixed. I do not understand why the law exists to begin with. Anyone have any history on that?

 

It's because the polar bear is federally endangered and subject to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the same one that prevents breeding of sea otters and manatees. I think the objective is to prevent people from harvesting animals from the wild and so causing more detriment to the populations. There was talk of the AZA lobbying Congress to revise the Act to allow breeding of orphans at accredited facilities to occur without a laborious FWS approval process, but I haven't heard about any progress being made. I imagine they've had more pressing matters to deal with the past few years...

Worth noting that Alaska Zoo is not AZA accredited, so that may also have an impact on their ability to take in and breed wild orphans.

 

An abominable folly I believe in the face of its IUCN status in the wild as well as recovery programs ex situ manouvarability et cetera.

 

Anana of the Cincinnati Zoo might be pregnant.

Cincinnati Zoo again on polar bear cub watch

 

Fingers crossed for Cincinnati! Any other zoos have denning activities going on?

 

Seneca Park Zoo stated that their female polar bear, Anoki, was starting to den and has access on and off exhibit. However, she was artificially inseminated and so far, there hasn't been any luck with that process in polar bears.

 

Hudson and Humphrey will be transferred to Aquarium of Quebec from Toronto while Taiga will be vice versa.

Toronto Zoo trading two male polar bears for a female polar bear and two walruses

 

A polar bear cub was born at the Columbus Zoo!!!

Polar bear cub born at Columbus Zoo

 

The sire is Lee (his first cub, even!) and the mother is Aurora, making it her fourth cub so far.

 

It’s her fourth cub

 

10 year old 0.1 Taiga passed away on January 21, 2020 at the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat.
Sudden death at Cochrane's Polar Bear Habitat | CTV News

The North American population now consists of 68 (34.33.1) polar bears.

 

0.1 Anana will be moving to Detroit, joining Nuka and Suka. This will leave Little One as the zoo's sole polar bear, according to Moebelle.

 

The Columbus Zoo has announced that the polar bear cub born to 1.0 Lee and 0.1 Aurora on November 28, 2019, is a male.
Boy or Girl? Polar Bear Cub Update - Columbus Zoo & Aquarium | Facebook

With the revelation of this news, the North American population now consists of 68 (35.33) polar bears.

 

I just realized that both females at Columbus are also descendants of the breeding pair at Toledo. That is not good; that means that every polar bear in the US born after 2006 is related to each other, excepting only the two singly-kept USFWS bears at Louisville and Saint Louis. The cubs being born at those two zoos are slowing the demographic decline, but it seems highly unlikely that it will be enough to sustain the population in the future without a change in law or government policy.

 

One exception, Luna at Buffalo is out of wild born male Nanuq and captive born female Anana. She was born in 2012, and is totally unrelated to the prolific Marty x Crystal line.

Unfortunately, every single potential breeding pair in the US right now, barring two (male Nuka and aforementioned female Anana at Detroit, and male Koda and female Snowflake at Pittsburgh), has a bear that is either an offspring or grandoffspring of Aussie x Arki. Not a good situation at all.

 

Is Anana not the offspring of Marty and Crystal, as is stated in this thread? Aren't she and Aurora sisters from that lineage?

 

No, there's three different Anana's in the US, one out of Marty x Crystal, one out of Yukon x Aurora, and a third out of Andy x Chinook. And the Aurora that bred with Yukon to produce Anana is a different Aurora from the one out of Marty x Crystal. Confusing much?

 

Ah, yes I see now; Luna was born to the Anana currently going from Cincinnati to Detroit, rather than the one living at Columbus. We really need more diversity in our polar bear naming scheme around here

While that *does* make her unrelated to the Marty x Crystal line, she is still related to some of the cubs born post-2006 because Nanuq also sired 4 living cubs while in Columbus (Hope, Amelia Gray, Neva, and Nuniq)... so of those, Luna is only unrelated to direct Marty x Crystal descendants (Hope and Borealis) and the recent cub sired by Lee. Even if she is paired with Borealis or the new cub in the future, that will only be a single unrelated breeding pair in the whole country (assuming that no reproduction occurs between older unrelated pairs, which has not happened yet but hopefully does).