Owners of Highland Wildlife Park hope Victoria, 18, will get chummy with male Arktos during her stay in the Cairngorms

The arrival of a female polar bear at a wildlife park in Scotland has raised the prospect of the first captive birth in Britain in 23 years.



The new arrival, Victoria, is an 18-year-old bear who has spent her life in zoos in Germany and Denmark. On Wednesday, she will be introduced to an enclosure purpose-built to encourage the delicate, potentially deadly, process of polar bear breeding. She is the only female polar bear in Britain.

She joins two males, Walker and Arktos, at Highland Wildlife Park (HWP) set amid the Cairngorm Mountains in the eastern highlands.

Her keepers plan to begin introducing her to Arktos gradually during April and May – polar bears’ prime breeding season. Beside her enclosure is a special annexe with its own pool, which will house Arktos who was chosen for his rare bloodline. A strong but see-through mesh fence will allow the pair to be introduced slowly.

Douglas Richardson, head of living collections for the HWP said this was necessary because in the wild male and female bears only come together to mate. At other times the solitary animals can be territorial. A fight could be disastrous given the vast power of the male bears, which can weigh four times as much as a potential mate.

“Male polar bears can kill female polar bears so if the introduction is done inappropriately, or too fast, or at the wrong time then you could end up with a dead female. So that kind of puts the kibosh on your breeding programme. With any introduction of large carnivores it needs to be done gradually and carefully,” said Richardson.

Keepers will monitor the bears’ behaviour for signs that both are ready to mate. At this point Arktos will be allowed into Victoria’s territory. Should a fight occur, keepers plan to scare Arktos aware with the noise and smoke of a fire extinguisher.

Polar bears breed between March and May, meaning Victoria only has a few weeks to settle if this year is to be a fruitful one for the programme. If she is not ready by the end of spring the keepers will wait until next year.

Victoria has previously given birth to a male bear at Aalborg Zoo in Denmark in 2008 amid huge publicity. The first days of the cub’s life were broadcast via webcams to hundreds of thousands of viewers. HWP plans on doing the same if they produce a cub.

Richardson said hosting a successful breeding programme would attract many visitors to the park, promoting polar bear conservation and helping fund other conservation programmes.



“We will see a very significant bump in visitor numbers. Producing a polar bear cub in the UK is probably on a par with producing a giant panda cub, as far as the publicity and the desire for people to come and see it.”

Polar bears are the largest land carnivore and are famously threatened by climate change. They depend on the Arctic’s declining sea ice for survival. Last week it was reported that this winter was the worst on record for Arctic sea ice coverage.

Richardson said the aim of the breeding programme was not to reintroduce animals to the wild.

“The wild population is crashing and climate change is causing a lack of hunting habitat so there would be absolutely no point in doing any reintroduction at the moment.”

Rather, he said, it was to maintain a genetic line that that was predicted to become extinct due to climate change.

The last polar bear born in captivity in the UK was at Flamingo Land in Yorkshire in 1992. Some wildlife advocates have battled against polar bears in captivity, arguing that it is impossible to provide their complex and particular needs in a zoo. A campaign by actvists saw Britain’s only polar bear at the time, Mercedes, moved from Edinburgh Zoo to more appropriate housing at HWP in 2009.

Chris Draper from the Born Free Foundation said HWP should not breed any new bears for captivity.

“There are considerable threats facing wild polar bear habitat, but the Born Free Foundation firmly believes that breeding more bears in zoos has no genuine role to play in polar bear conservation. Furthermore, experience of polar bears in zoos the world over has shown us time and again that polar bears simply do not fare well in captivity - partly as a consequence of the restricted environment,” he said.

Visitors to HWP should be able to visit Victoria in early April.