San Diego Zoo Blogs

Ron is in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, working with Polar Bears International. Read his previous post, Reaching Out for Polar Bears.

What I want to talk about to today is hope—hope for conservation, and hope for our planet even though it is facing unprecedented environmental challenges. I’m in Churchill in Manitoba, Canada, working with friends and collaborators at Polar Bears International. It’s a surreal experience going out on the Tundra Buggies and seeing wild polar bears. But underneath this joyful experience there is also sadness, because I know that this “polar bear capital” may one day have no polar bears. By now, most of us know that the polar bears are losing their sea-ice habitat and here, at the southern end of their range, they will disappear first. We’ve already lost almost a quarter of them in the past 15 years. In another 15, there may be no polar bears left in Churchill.
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Some of you have been asking about the panda cub’s vocalizations. You have wondered if he is loud, protesting mother’s grooming or nibbling activities. Some of you have expressed concern about the fact that Bai Yun is so frequently – and so long – away from the den these days. In fact, Bai Yun’s den departures and the cub’s vocal pattern are interrelated. Let me explain…
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This guy, he’s a heartbreaker. Oh yeah, you know I’m talking about the San Diego Zoo’s 13-week-old giant panda cub.

Today was the first time I got to see the furry ball of fluff. I was in the exam room as a Zoo PR rep writing today’s press release on the exam. I thought I was ready for it. Just like you, I’ve seen the videos. Studied the photos of him exam after exam.
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As we are starting to get some cooler weather, there is a definite change in our pandas’ behavior and eating habits. In China, these bears would be dealing with much colder weather than we have here in San Diego, and in the winter they would even have snow. Giant pandas are found in elevations of 4,000 to 11,000 feet (1,200 to 3,300 meters), so they would feel that weather change there much more than here at our Zoo! Pandas, unlike most bears, don’t hibernate. Having a good fat layer and a 3-inch-thick (8-centimeter-thick) fur coat helps keep them warm and dry. Even when it rains, only that top layer of fur gets wet, and if you were to examine the fur closer to their skin you’d find it nice and dry.
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Ron is in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, working with Polar Bears International. Read his previous post, The Polar Bears of Churchill.

This really is shaping up to be an amazing experience. Each day I go out on the Tundra Buggy, run by Frontiers North Adventures. Oh, and by the way, they are giving us a free pass on the Tundra Buggy and a room in the Tundra Lodge. They like what we are doing, trying to bring more attention to the plight of the polar bear. And it’s hard to imagine a species more deserving of attention than polar bears. They are the world’s largest terrestrial carnivores, and they are impressive.
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For a few years now, I have been a panda narrator at the San Diego Zoo’s Giant Panda Research Station and have enjoyed watching pandas go through different stages in life as well as their day-to-day changes. I have always admired our keepers and researchers at the Zoo for what they do for our animals here and what they do for the conservation community. Our keepers must do cleaning and feeding on a schedule as well as be incredibly observant of their animals and noticing changes in behavior. I have been fortunate enough to be a part of that and learn valuable lessons from our Panda Team.
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We got a very special surprise today at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center (DTCC). One of our hard-working volunteers, Jim Brinson, was digging up an empty tortoise burrow to sterilize it and get it ready for a newly arriving tortoise when he came across a nest of eggs. Seeing the darkened color of the eggs and knowing that it is too late in the season for the eggs to hatch, he knew that the eggs were not viable (no tortoise babies in the eggs). This happens in nature from time to time. He put the eggs to the side and continued his task of digging in the dirt and sterilizing the burrow. But suddenly, as he was moving the dirt from the location of the burrow to the area beside it, he saw a small object covered in dirt fall from the shovel. He reached down to pick it up and saw that it was a fully formed hatchling!
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Russ Van Horn is currently in Peru to study Andean (spectacled) bears. Read his previous post, Bear Care in Conservation Terms.

In my last post, I rambled on about why conservation of Andean (or spectacled) bears, and conservation in general, matters, from a scientific viewpoint. This time around I’ll wade into some of the other reasons we work for conservation.

The e-mail that started me on these two posts highlighted a Web site showing some hunters with big game “trophies.” In this case, the trophies were taxidermy mounts of large mammals, mostly carnivores. In the background was a stuffed Andean bear, and the presence of this stuffed bear disturbed the e-mail’s writer and at least some of its readers.
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I saw a bear. Okay, I saw six. And it only took a couple of hours. I’ve been working with bears for many years now, and this is not what I’m used to. I’ve worked most extensively with giant pandas, and it took me years to see a panda in the wild. Recently, I started working with Andean (or spectacled) bears and, with a lot of sweat and hard work (and the help of an experienced collaborator), managed to see ONE in Peru (see post The Bear Goes Over the Mountain). But here, polar bears are everywhere! For now.

I’m in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, known as the polar bear capital of the world. I’m here as a guest of my friends and collaborators (and supporters!) at Polar Bears International. This is a terrific organization, and they have given me a terrific opportunity. More on that later. The bears are beautiful! I can’t wait to share more about the bears in my next posts.
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The Backstage Pass program at the San Diego Zoo has added a new member to its star-studded cast. As far as leading men go, this critter is not one of the typical ones you might think of when you hear that title. Instead, he would be along the lines of a Danny Devito or Joe Pecsi. He’s the punky little street fighter type: a North American badger!
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