Seneca & Toronto Zoo's

[Donna]

Toronto Zoo opens new Arctic exhibition
Tundra Trek at the Toronto Zoo teaches about Arctic wildlife

Rochesterians have a special place in their hearts for polar bears, with Seneca Park Zoo's Aurora bearing four cubs. Aurora is in an area of the zoo with sea lions and near emus and penguins.
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The new permanent Tundra Trek exhibit at the Toronto Zoo should appeal to the same hearts, while explaining the issues surrounding global warming and its effect on animals.

Over the course of 11/2 years of work and study, which included numerous trips north to Hudson's Bay, staff at the Toronto Zoo have painstakingly recreated an authentic 10-acre tundra landscape featuring spacious habitats for Arctic wolf, Arctic fox, snowy owls and European reindeer.

Just as Aurora and her now-deceased mate, Yukon, have been the stars of the Rochester exhibit, the undisputed king of this Tundra Trek is Inukshuk, a magnificent polar bear who started out with a quasi-criminal record.

Orphaned as a cub, he was rescued in Hudson's Bay by the Ontario Provincial Police who, needing a safe enclosure, placed him overnight in a jail cell. Despite this somewhat dubious beginning, Inukshuk has developed into a handsome and protective male who shares his new home with two beautiful females: Aurora and Nikita. As with Inukshuk, they too were orphaned, but in the relative safety of a provincial park.

To promote conservation efforts, the zoo has started an interactive animated Web site, the Polartweets.com. The more people tweet environmentally friendly messages through the site, the bigger the iceberg grows for the polar bear. If this channel of Twitter is silent, the iceberg leaves the environment, putting the animated bear in peril.

As in Rochester, at Toronto, the polar bears can sun themselves on rocky promontories or come face to face with visitors through the windows of an underwater viewing den.

Nearby, a pack of white Arctic wolves vocalizes and lopes across their rocky terrain, or pop up from behind a grassy knoll to startle the unwary viewer. As with the polar bear, these highly socialized animals also are endangered by changing climate patterns.

Across the way two snowy owls, snuggled into their puffed-up feathers, gaze unblinking at passersby from the safety of their specially built stone grottoes. The heaviest owls in North America, they sit patiently, eyes unmoving as their heads swivel to scan the landscape. And farther on, the European reindeer (known as caribou to Canadians) munch contentedly on their own select sweep of tundra, raising handsomely horned heads to observe their human intruders.
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This new Tundra Trek offers a wealth of entertainment and diversion for the entire family. For adults, there's enlightening and thought-provoking information on the dangers to these creatures, as well as to ourselves, of climate change.

For the small fry, there's much to provoke oohs and aahs of delight, including Native teepees strong enough to withstand wintery blasts, a genuine bush plane, snow geese, Arctic fox locked in playful wrestling and even a specially constructed fox den for children to crawl through, and other interactive displays.

[Judi]

Wow...that new exhibit sounds so very cool!  Guess I need to save my money to go there next year for vacation, huh?