Why the 'World's Saddest Polar Bear' may not get a new home
LONDON -- By now you've probably heard of Pizza the bear, a.k.a "the world's saddest polar bear".
Pizza currently resides in cramped quarters at a Chinese shopping centre in the southern city of Guangzhou where visitors to Grandview Mall like to pose for selfies with him and the other residents of the aquarium.
His sad plight ignited controversy on an international scale when Hong Kong-based charity Animals Asia exposed the substandard conditions of the aquarium.
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Now, a publicized offer from Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster, England, to re-home the bear seems to have offered some hope of a happy ending for Pizza.
However, according to Animal Asia's Welfare Director David Neale who helped to facilitate the offer of a new home, sadly that might not happen.
Neale has been working with Grandview to provide guidance on how to improve conditions for its animals, visiting the mall's aquarium to give presentations to its staff on basic animal management. While he says Grandview has been more receptive to the organisation's advice than other zoos and aquariums in the region, he told Mashable, "Grandview weren’t looking for a home for their polar bear.
"They very much want to improve the welfare of this polar bear, but they were never saying, 'we want to re-home this bear'”.
Neale says that the facilities at the Grandview Mall will never adequately provide the notoriously difficult conditions necessary to meet the needs of a polar bear kept in captivity. In contrast, Yorkshire Wildlife Park's 10-acre Project Polar complex is uniquely designed to home the arctic animals.
Yorkshire Wildlife Park's flagship programme strives to improve the welfare of polar bears worldwide through educational efforts and, when necessary, by providing a home for bears found to be living in poor conditions.
The park has rehabilitated four bears on its special conservation site, which has been built to simulate a summer Arctic tundra.
While Yorkshire's polar bear paradise sounds like an excellent alternative to Pizza's current situation, despite all the negative attention Grandview has to-date made no indication that it intends to accept the offer. Neale says that the mall's aquarium is looking to expand its collection of animals in line with current trend towards displaying animals in captivity within China.
"Ultimately it will only change when the public stop going", he explains.
"The times I’ve been to Grandview the place is actually heaving. They’re getting millions of visitors. Even though they’re getting negative publicity internationally, there has been very little change in the public’s opinion within China."
Animals Asia works with activists in China to help raise public awareness for the welfare of animals kept in captivity. The best way for concerned animal lovers to help critters like Pizza is to write letters to the Chinese embassy in their respective countries to put pressure on China's government to improve its standards for animal welfare.
