Assiniboine Park Zoo Snow Turning at Assiniboine Park Zoo

Yet another polar bear exhibit! Just this year there have been openings in Brookfield, Como, Columbus and Kansas City. With room for 6 adult bears Assiniboine will be a large facility, but other than wild orphans I'm not sure where the bears will come from as it has been a bit of a struggle for other zoos to locate extra captive polar bears.
 
The article mentions "Manitoba standards" which I saw mentioned recently on another polar bear thread here at ZooChat. Can someone please tell me what that is.
 
Thank you. All seems to make sense except for the very last item. Public cannot have more than a 180 degree view of the exhibit. Why not?
 
Arizona Docent said:
Thank you. All seems to make sense except for the very last item. Public cannot have more than a 180 degree view of the exhibit. Why not?
Click to expand...

I'm sure this is well-intended to prevent placing the bears in a stressful situation where they are "surrounded" by people, with no visual retreat opportunity.

But one of the "standards" is that the barriers surrounding polar bears must be 19.5 feet tall, an absolutely ludicrous requirement that adds significantly to the cost of building exhibits and to the difficulty of creating attractive views. I've heard that this came about when the scientists who promulgated the standards suggested a minimum height of 5 meters, and the lawyers who signed off on the regulations just added an additional meter and a half "just to be safe."

I believe these standards have been revised to a more reasonable height requirement, but only after a zoo in Manitoba was planning to renovate their enclosures and realized the cost implications of the "extra" (and totally unnecessary) height! This of course came after several US zoos built or modified their exhibits to meet the original standard at great financial or aesthetic expense, in order to be able to obtain animals from Manitoba. See the Gallery photos of the added fence on the rear moat at Pt. Defiance Zoo, where bears had been safely housed for over 25 years, which completely destroyed one of the greatest zoo vistas ever created.
 
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