A small boy calls out the sights because the practice speeds by the Suffolk countryside from London Liverpool Road.
“Tractor. Church. Pigs. Polar bear! Dad! A polar bear!”
The dad doesn’t look up. “We don’t have polar bears on this nation.”
However the boy isn’t dreaming. There they’re: 4 polar bears lumbering throughout an enormous inexperienced meadow beside a pond, just a few miles exterior Ipswich.
The arrival of the bears beside the railway line is inflicting loads of double-takes from passengers. Typically, the bears are introduced by the conductor. Often, the motive force seems to decelerate. It’s solely a matter of time earlier than this practice is renamed the Polar Categorical.
Polar bears belong within the frozen Arctic, above 70 levels north. And but these magnificent carnivores, one of many largest surviving land mammals on Earth, have been stored in captivity at a lot hotter latitudes since Egyptian instances. King Henry III housed one within the Tower of London. Within the twentieth century, they turned the charismatic inmates of concrete enclosures in flourishing city zoos. Screaming crowds liked them.
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Sailors go to the polar bear enclosure at London zoo in 1930. Beneath: a bear at Dudley Zoo in Worcestershire, 1937 (left), and Brumas, the primary child polar bear to be efficiently reared within the UK, at London Zoo in 1950. Images: Fox/Getty Photos; Mirrorpix/Getty Photos
By the Nineteen Nineties although, polar bears had develop into the main target of campaigns to finish the caging of massive, clever, far-roaming animals. British zoos appeared to simply accept the argument that these carnivores, whose wild dwelling vary may very well be as huge as 135,000 sq. miles, couldn’t flourish in a zoo enclosure lower than a millionth of that measurement. By the flip of the century, only one polar bear remained in Britain.
Now, nonetheless, the polar bears are again. Within the final yr, Jimmy’s Farm, the farm and wildlife park run by farmer, conservationist and TV presenter Jimmy Doherty, has taken in 4. An extra 12 bears reside in three different British parks. Are these captive animals one of the best hope for a climate-challenged species whose wild inhabitants has dwindled to 26,000? Or ought to they not be right here in any respect?
The truth that a 49-year-old pig farmer owns 4 polar bears may very well be essentially the most weird farm diversification ever. “Proprietor of polar bears. It makes me sound like I’m a Nordic god,” muses Doherty, resplendent in double denim. How concerning the British Tiger King? “Jimmy Unique. That will be one thing. I haven’t bought the outfits he’s bought,” says Doherty of the eccentric Joe Unique from the Netflix collection. “And I received’t be ringing up Trump to get me out of jail.”
The story of how Doherty constructed the biggest polar bear enclosure in Europe stretches again to his childhood, when he was faculty mates with Jamie Oliver. The younger Doherty was mad-keen on nature, labored at a wildlife park and spent his earnings (he nonetheless remembers his wage: £1.12 an hour) on his personal menagerie: polecats, terrapins, stick bugs. “In my bed room had been a great deal of snakes. I stored my pocket cash in a glass jar inside a snake tank so nobody would nick it.”
Later, Doherty studied zoology earlier than dropping out of an entomology PhD to rear pigs. He’d been impressed by John Seymour’s self-sufficiency books, and together with his entrepreneurial instincts he realised he might promote rare-breed pork and bacon on to new farmers’ markets. He rented 40.4 hectares (100 acres) of derelict floor and lived in a caravan; he was assisted by the Jimmy’s Farm documentary collection and a £55,000 mortgage from Oliver. When he opened a farm store he noticed that guests had been fascinated by the animals. “So I put a sow and a litter out, after which a path, and it turned a farm park,” he says.
Then the telephone calls started. The RSPCA requested him to take emus present in a shed in Ipswich. A snapping turtle was found by a neighborhood storage. “She’s referred to as Peaches,” he says. “An increasing number of unique stuff.” When Doherty opened a butterfly home, his farm turned a registered zoo.
Doherty sees nothing odd concerning the pigs and polar bears combo – it’s all a part of his mission to champion world and native conservation, farming and rewilding, and reconnect youngsters with nature and native meals manufacturing, as he explains once we stroll by his park.
There’s a rescued South American ring-tailed coati and racoons saved from a shed in Felixstowe. You might say Doherty’s a rescuer. He can also’t resist an enormous thought. “There’s at all times one other one across the nook,” he says. “Somebody says ‘we want your assist’ and it by some means offers you permission.” Doherty as soon as mentioned that he by no means wished his park to be a kind of locations with polar bears and tigers. However that modified in 2022 when he heard that Orsa Predator Park in Sweden was closing and wanted to rehome two polar bears.
“Ewa had a troublesome life – alopecia, a damaged claw. She couldn’t return to the wild they usually had been going to place her down,” says Doherty. “Time was of the essence.” He borrowed cash from the financial institution and, utilizing donated telegraph poles, constructed 15km of 4m-high fencing round a 6.5-hectare (16-acre) enclosure, which features a 16m-deep purpose-built pool, two dens, a state-of-the-art ventilated home, a saltwater dipping pool and a big pure woodland space. This facility price £1m. “It’s an enormous dedication. It’s like getting married once more,” he says. Was it an enormous danger? “Was? Nonetheless is.”
Two bears, Ewa and her grownup cub Miki, had been shipped from Sweden to Suffolk final autumn. Inside days of arriving, Miki was lifeless. “That was horrific,” says Doherty. Miki had an undiagnosed coronary heart situation. “She was a ticking timebomb. She might’ve gone at any time. It was actually unhappy.”
Since then, Ewa has been joined by fellow females Hope (a former companion from Sweden), and Flocke and Tala from Yorkshire Wildlife Park. These two are a part of the European Endangered Species Programme (EEP) for polar bears, an official zoo breeding programme which goals to safeguard wholesome populations of threatened species in captivity.
On a brilliant autumn day, Tala is enjoying in a lake, whereas Flocke and Hope are rapidly drawn to a keeper arriving with melons, which they love. Ewa is ambling alone – it’s necessary they’ll discover non-public area, explains park director Stevie Sheppard. “There’s two huge issues we attempt to do with all our animals. One is to present them area. And the second is alternative. In the event that they need to stroll within the woods as a result of it’s cooler, they’ll stroll within the woods. They will dive within the deep lakes, bathe within the shallow pool or roll round within the grass or go in a den – it’s their alternative.”
How an Arctic species copes with sunny Suffolk at 52 levels north stands out as the most-asked query. Doherty factors out that imply excessive summer time temperatures in Hudson Bay – polar bear nation – are larger than Suffolk’s 22C. “Our fear was the excessive temperatures – that’s after they get warmth stress,” says Doherty. “In the event that they need to regulate their temperature they’ll go within the woodland, which is about 4C cooler. Having that woodland and the deep pool has actually helped.”
Enrichment features a various, seasonal eating regimen, whole-carcass feeding (a lifeless horse or cow), meals in blocks of ice, foraging for blackberries, watching the small fish within the ponds and loads of toys. Doherty notably enjoys letting them into the woods. “You see them sliding down the hill within the woodland. They pile up the mud and roll about,” he says.
The enclosures at Jimmy’s Farm are a far cry from conventional zoo pens. For critics, nonetheless, they’re nonetheless a a lot, a lot smaller area than the wild species enjoys. “We acknowledge that the amenities within the UK are among the bigger amenities in Europe,” says Chris Lewis of the Born Free Basis. Finally, the charity believes that no polar bears must be stored in captivity. They level to proof of stress in captivity: shortened lifespans, a excessive stage of stress-related fatalities, excessive toddler mortality (a 2003 research put it at 65%), and a excessive danger of captivity-induced illnesses. “Our short-term asks of the zoo trade can be to cease breeding polar bears after which look to part out the present inhabitants,” says Lewis, “as a result of there’s no significant or direct conservation profit to holding polar bears in captivity.”
Lewis says it’s “arduous to know” why polar bears have returned to British zoos. Are they irresistible? Again in 2007, one bear powerfully demonstrated their box-office standing to the remainder of the European zoo neighborhood. Knut, a cub rejected by his mom at Berlin zoo, was hand-reared by a faithful keeper and have become a worldwide media sensation. Knutmania noticed Berlin zoo get pleasure from essentially the most worthwhile yr in its 163-year historical past, with 30% extra guests and €5m in income. Merchandise, books and movies adopted – and tragedy. Knut’s keeper died, and so did Knut, aged simply 4, of a seizure triggered by encephalitis.
Bringing polar bears to Jimmy’s Farm was clearly a call of the guts for Doherty – however he had his monetary head on too. “The sums have so as to add up, in any other case you’re being silly. You be sure you repay the loans,” he says. That they had a 50% improve in guests over summer time half-term and are aiming for 300,000 this yr.
Another excuse for British zoos bringing again polar bears is the progressive work of Douglas Richardson. At Highland Wildlife Park in 2009, he oversaw the creation of a brand new polar bear enclosure, so Britain’s ageing final polar bear, Mercedes, may very well be relocated from Edinburgh. Bear enclosures had been as soon as expensively made out of concrete and metal, which essentially made them small. Richardson deployed rather more cost-effective deer fencing, strengthened with electrical fencing, which was low cost sufficient to construct a four-hectare (10-acre) enclosure.
“Utilizing what one colleague referred to as ‘rooster wire and harsh language’ to comprise polar bears allowed you to surround very giant areas very economically,” says Richardson, who has since suggested all three British zoos that hold them. Yorkshire Wildlife Park arrange a brand new four-hectare (10-acre) enclosure in 2014; they now have six bears. Staffordshire’s Peak Wildlife Park retains two bears in two hectares (5 acres). Underneath Richardson’s steering, the primary British polar bear cub for 25 years, Hamish, was born at Highland Wildlife Park in 2017.
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Hamish as a cub and simply three years later, at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster. Images: Royal Zoological Society of Scotland/PA; Danny Lawson/PA
“The best way polar bears had been stored in zoos traditionally was, to be frank, nothing wanting appalling,” says Richardson. However he argues the brand new enclosures are a distinct world. He didn’t recognise Ewa when he checked on her at Jimmy’s Farm in September: her alopecia has vanished, she’s off remedy and has returned to her pure cycle. Of Doherty’s woodland, Richardson says: “It’s not precisely polar bear habitat however there’s a number of shade and plenty of attention-grabbing smells. And it seems polar bears like mushrooms.”
The thought of zoos being arks for imperilled wild populations stays a well-liked one. However a zoo-kept polar bear has by no means been efficiently returned to the wild. “Widespread zoo reintroduction successes are normally invertebrates they’ve been capable of breed in giant numbers,” says Lewis. “Different examples that the zoo trade makes use of are at all times the identical as a result of there’s so few – the Arabian oryx, the California condor. There’s not sufficient area to maintain [polar bears] in sufficient numbers to have a genetically various inhabitants that’s wholesome sufficient to launch into the wild. Zoos are nearly a distraction. Conservation motion must be taken to deal with the threats dealing with these species within the wild – the local weather disaster, air pollution, human encroachment.”
Richardson, who advises the European captive-breeding programme for polar bears, admits that “reintroducing polar bears from a captive inhabitants can be vastly, vastly tough” however argues that at the least a captive inhabitants retains that choice. He says the European inhabitants of 120 animals, based mostly on 60 founder animals, is genetically viable as a result of there was a gradual addition of latest wild people by way of Russia. “When you’ve got a daily infusion of latest founders your precise inhabitants needn’t be monumental,” he says.
Within the close to future, Richardson predicts that world heating will result in extra local weather change refugee polar bears requiring rescue from the wild. He hopes that new, huge fenced reserves extra reflective of the polar bears’ pure vary could also be established, mimicking what number of African safari animals reside in fenced reserves.
Again at Jimmy’s Farm, Doherty is just not ruling out breeding polar bears. “Possibly in the future, if we had been referred to as upon, and there was good motive to do it, and it was that we want extra paws on the bottom,” he says.
In the meantime, there’s one other huge thought – or animal rescue – to take care of. Regardless of being “skint”, Doherty crowdfunded to save lots of the final brown bear, Diego, from Orsa Predator Park, and is now importing one other brown bear from a Romanian sanctuary. I can think about Michaela, Doherty’s spouse, rolling her eyes at his newest rescue. Does he get instructed off for all the brand new burdens he acquires? “Quite a bit. There’s at all times somebody that wants assist. That’s the issue.”
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