Britain's famous Canadian polar bear gets new digs

By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service
March 1, 2009

The Canadian polar bear at the centre of Britain’s longest-running animal-rights feud is being moved from its controversial Victorian-era enclosure at the Edinburgh Zoo to a new, 1.6-hectare home at a wilderness park in northern Scotland.

The $600,000 enclosure at the Highland Wildlife Park is being specially built by the British army for Mercedes, a 28-year-old female captured as a young bear in northern Manitoba in 1984.

It was spared from being euthanized by public safety officers in Churchill, Man. when the luxury car company for which the bear is named paid to have it send to the Scottish zoo.

Like another bear with Manitoba links that went on to become Britain’s most popular animal — the First World War-era black bear at the London Zoo that inspired the Winnie-the-Pooh stories — Mercedes has for years been Edinburgh’s top zoo attraction and one of the country’s most recognized creatures.

But the polar bear’s captive existence has also been the focus of intense criticism from Britain’s influential animal-rights movement, which in 2005 created a transatlantic uproar after claiming Mercedes was “going crazy” because of the cramped conditions in which the beast was living.

As the Mercedes controversy raged on front pages in both Britain and Canada, the zoo rejected charges of cruelty but continued to explore alternative living arrangements for the bear.

Now, in response to unyielding pressure from wildlife activists and the British public, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland — which operates the Edinburgh Zoo — has announced plans to retire Mercedes to an expansive enclosure in its affiliated wilderness reserve south of Inverness, about 200 km northwest of the Scottish capital.

“It has been our intention to move Mercedes for a couple of years now,” Iain Valentine, the society’s director of animals, conservation and education, said in a statement issued Friday. “She has been happy at Edinburgh Zoo and her existing enclosure is perfectly adequate, but public perception has always been that they would like to see her in a larger enclosure.”

Valentine said the army’s offer to help construct the bear’s new home leaves just $150,000 to be raised to complete the enclosure, which is expected to be ready this year.

Mercedes’ new Highlands habitat, described by the society as the largest for any polar bear in Europe, will feature “a large natural pool and will provide her with a natural tundra environment in a climate that is ideal for a polar bear.”

Mercedes, the only polar bear in any British zoo, lost her male companion Barney in 1996 after it choked on a plastic toy cricket bat accidentally dropped in its pen.

The two mates had earlier produced two cubs that were moved to other zoos outside of Britain.

In a statement to British media, Advocates for Animals spokesman Ross Minett applauded Mercedes’ planned move but criticized the caging of any wildlife.

“Undoubtedly, if this move takes place, Mercedes will live in better conditions than those imposed upon her in the zoo,” he said. “But however large an enclosure she is moved to, whilst it may be an improvement, it’s only a fraction of the freedom a polar bear would enjoy in its natural environment. Having forced Mercedes into captivity and exploited her for entertainment for 25 years, this is the least that can be done to improve her quality of life.”

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