Polar bear and her cubs settle into new Staffordshire home before meeting public for first time
A mother polar bear and her two cubs are settling into their new home at Peak Wildlife Park near Leek, Staffordshire, before meeting the public next month. Hope and her young male cubs Nanook and Noori recently arrived from Orsa Predator Park in Sweden, which is closing down and needed to rehome them. The bears have a specially designed space at the park, with large, natural pools and rugged terrain within the five-acre site.Kim Wilkins, head keeper at Peak Wildlife Park, explains why visitors will not necessarily see the polar bears living in snow and ice.
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00:00 (dog barking)
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00:15 - I think it's one of the things
00:41 that confuse a lot of people
00:43 because obviously everything that we see on TV
00:45 for polar bears is all on ice and snow.
00:47 And of course, all the bears' major biological functions
00:51 occur on the ice.
00:52 They breed there, they feed there,
00:53 they raise their cubs there.
00:55 But the Arctic isn't ice all year round.
00:57 It goes through an ice-free period.
01:00 And Churchill, which is like the polar bear capital
01:02 of the world, frequently reaches high 20s
01:05 to low 30s in the summertime.
01:08 And the bears in the wild would do exactly
01:09 what our bears here would do,
01:11 which is go for a bit of a swim, have a bit of a sunbathe,
01:14 and really not expend that much energy when it's warm.
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