It has been more than two decades since polar bears were last a part of the species protected at the Calgary Zoo, but now they’re back in a big way, literally.

In the works for 26 months, The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo has been redeveloping the portion of the zoo formerly known as the Canadian Wilds into Wild Canada—a revamped, and in parts completely so, habitat space for some of Canada’s most iconic species.

That includes a 2-acre habitat for a pair of polar bears, Baffin and Siku, which has been designed to be more humane and enjoyable for the species.

“It took a long time for us to design and come up with all the different features that we wanted in there,” said Patrick Thompson, animal care manager for Wild Canada.

“We tried to make it as interactive and as interesting for the polar bears as we could. When you take a look at it, there’s lots of natural trees, lots of changes in elevation, we’ve got three different pools that the bears can access as well as different bear-operated water features they can play with.”

The habitat is large enough, said Thompson, that even if the pair of bears want some space from each other, they can do so without being in the line of sight of one another.

He said that the large space was important to ensure that the bears, which are normally solitary in the wild, can have the choice of how and when they interact with various features of the area.

“There’s lots of things for them to do throughout the day. So, if they’re they feel like they want to wrestle, like they were this afternoon, they can go into the big middle part of the yard and they can spar. If they want to come for a swim, they have choices as to where they want to swim. If they want to go interact with something dig somewhere they absolutely can,” Thompson said.

“It just helps keep them stimulated and helps them exhibit all sorts of different natural behaviours.”

Bears get comfortable with multiple comforts

Among the other features that have been provided to the bears is a year-round climate-conditioned indoor space and glycol-cooled rocks to provide relief from the heat during warmer days.

“The really great thing about Calgary is that it’s actually not that different than the climate they’re really going to be coming from. It’s actually fairly similar in a lot of ways,” said Thompson.

“These bears are adapted to deal with our climate, so they should be fairly comfortable while they’re here.”

The bears were moved to the Calgary Zoo from the Assiniboine Zoo in Winnipeg. Both bears were originally orphaned cubs that were found in the wild near Churchill and were placed into human care by conservation officers in Manitoba, given the survival rate for orphaned cubs is virtually non-existent.

Although not brothers, Baffin and Siku are so bonded that visitors might mistake that to be the case.

“Everybody knows or most people should know that polar bears are one of the species that are really on the frontlines in the battle against climate change. The sea ice is leaving earlier every year, and it’s coming back later every year. Their opportunities to hunt their main food sources are becoming more and more limited,” Thompson said.

“This is a species that’s under a lot of pressure, but by being able to provide homes for animals like that at The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, it helps us provide more space and allows us to bring those animals that will not survive in the wild into human care so that they can come be appreciated by the public, and we can help educate people about the what the pressures are.”

Mission to educate and to save

Dr. Clément Lanthier, president and CEO of The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, said that the polar bear habitat had a different mission in mind than the species re-introduction plans that are at the heart of other parts of the zoo.

“We’re very active in almost 30 species recovery plans around the world, most of them in Canada, but there’s no plan for recovery or reintroducing the polar bears. We unfortunately anticipate in the next decade that we’ll see more and more orphans coming from the wild because of climate change,” he said.

“A sow will come into a village, and she might be killed because she’s confrontational. What are we going to do with the cubs? So, we don’t need to breed polar bears, what we need to do is to talk about climate change and try to change the way we live to to be more responsible.”

He said that the new exhibit was connecting Calgarians and visitors to Calgary with the nature of the Canadian Arctic and that they plan on using the pair of bears as ambassadors to spread the message of what is happening in the wild.

“We’re going to have more educational program signage, school programs for talking about climate change, and how we can change the way we live just a little bit that have a big impact on preserving the landscape and those species,” Lanthier said.

Redevelopment took thousands of people to pull off

Kathryne Gibson, Director for Development at The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, said that the entire redevelopment was made possible by more than 1,000 individual donors, organizations, and all orders of government who collectively contributed $42 million towards the redevelopment.

The City of Calgary gave $4.5 million, alongside a $15.5 million investment from the Province of Alberta.

Gibson said that construction on the redevelopment took 26 months, and involved more than a thousand people working at 50 different companies. The project was also the zoo’s largest-ever capital endeavour.

“You know, people are absolutely blown away by the new spaces, and so we’re so excited to see what the public thinks when we open up,” she said.

Among those persons who was himself impressed with what the zoo had created, was Don Taylor, whose foundation’s funding made the polar bear exhibit possible.

“I’m very, very happy—pleased that we’ve been able to attract and build a facility that polar bears can be comfortable living in, and we can have them on display for Calgarians,” he said.

“It’s going to be a wonderful facility to show off some of the character and the personality Calgary, and our ability to look after wild animals and preserve wildlife.”

Taylor joked that it was 80 years ago that he first remembered coming to the Calgary Zoo, and the only animal he could remember seeing was a polar bear named Carmichael.

“I remember coming to see the polar bear and it was a very tormented animal. Obviously, the habitat, the environment was not conducive to making the polar bear comfortable. What we have here now is an ideal facility for polar bears,” Taylor said.

“I think these polar bears are very happy. I watched one polar bear eat a cantaloupe the other day, and it was actually the most comical thing because he rotated it in his hands, took a little nibble—I think the first time he’d ever ate a cantaloupe—but he decided that he liked it.”

On Dec. 1, following the grand opening of the entire Wild Canada exhibit, Baffin and Siku were given a pair of honorary White Hats for their new status as ambassadors for Calgary hospitality, with a twist.

Carved in ice, the hats were also festooned with lots of edible treats like lettuce, carrots, and apples. Both bears gently collected the treats from the hats with their paws, only knocking over the ice displays later gently—so gently the ice hats didn’t crack—so they could lick the top.

“They’re very very majestic and great animals to watch any visitor to the zoo is going to be thrilled to be here,” said Taylor.

Many more habitats redeveloped for the better

Besides the polar bears, habitats for Bighorn sheep, owls, caribou, muskox, otters, and whooping cranes were part of the overall redevelopment of Wild Canada.

Colleen Baird, Director of Animal Health and Welfare for The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo, said that a lot of research went into getting all of the habitats right for their species.

Among those changes, she said, were new spaces and streams for the caribou, new back-of-house areas for the muskox, and a much enlarged (although still under construction) area for the whooping cranes.

“We’ve really given the animals what they need, and what they should have had a long time ago. The fact that we get to unveil this, and and we’re so proud of it, and we see the people’s faces we’re like, ‘I think we got it right,'” she said.

“We work we work with these animals daily, so we know them intimately. The fact that we can provide them with more dynamic habitats, more space, things that make it easier for us to care for them in human care. It also benefits our public… you can see how the caribou were interacting with the trees that they have in their habitat, and now you can see the otter swimming and running and jumping that we had never got to see before.”

She said that there were two parts of the public viewing the animals in their new enclosures. One part was viewing them in a safe way at the zoo that doesn’t cause the same sort of detrimental impacts to animals the way visitors to places like Banff or Jasper impact wild animals.

The second, she said, was that people visiting the zoo would still get to see those natural behaviours.

“We do give them the choices to make species behavioural choices, which is like ‘I’m going to dig into stream today,’ ‘I’m going to rub my horns on a tree,’ ‘I’m going to swim in a river that looks like a river,'” Baird said.

“This is a safe way that not only you can come and see them in what looks like a natural habitat that they might see in the wild, but also you get to get educated, you get to come back over and over and really get to know the individual [animal].”

For more information on the new Wild Canada area of the Calgary Zoo, see www.calgaryzoo.com.

Photos from Wild Canada