The San Diego Zoo has an incredible polar bear exhibit, but it has just been renovated with education in mind.
The climate changes have been hard on polar bears in the wild. Their natural habitats are dwindling and their food supplies are disappearing. The world famous San Diego Zoo’s Polar Bear Plunge exhibit hopes to educate visitors about the effect of global warming.
There are three bears at the Polar Bear Plunge exhibit – 15-year-old Chinook and her nine-year-old brother Kalluk and sister Tatqiq. The $1 million renovation features “the world’s first moveable experience wall.” This wall will be removed several times a day, allowing zoo visitors to see the trainers and polar bears interact.
There are also huge storybooks for kids plus a polar bear den the kids can crawl into. Displays show how the arctic ice is diminishing and how carbon emissions have skyrocketed. Visitors can also track their carbon footprint, which many believe is causing the global warming, online at the zoo’s web site. Patrons of the zoo can adopt a polar bear, which goes to support either enrichment programs for the animals or towards a conservation fund.
Rick Schwartz, the ambassador for the Zoological Society of San Diego and senior animal keeper at the San Diego Zoo, points out an interesting fact. He said, “When [the exhibit] was first built, there was no concern for polar bear habitat. Everything was fine and the numbers were stable. In the short 13 or 14 years since then, a lot has happened to polar bear habitat.”
Still, all scientists are not on board that the global warming problem is being caused by man. Schwartz said that only 84 percent of scientists think the problem is manmade – leaving almost 20 percent that think the change is just a natural cycle.
The zoo’s stance is simple – regardless of what is causing the problem, the polar bears are being threatened. But, the exhibit is designed to show visitors that it isn’t too late to make a change and help the polar bears.
(This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.)