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Polar bears leave Canada despite public campaign

"Japan has an appalling animal welfare record"

JANE GEORGE

This polar bear cub, orphaned at 5 months, is on the way to Australia. (FILE PHOTO)

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Canadian animal rights groups are outraged that two polar bear cubs from Nunavik were shipped from Quebec City to the Seaworld Gold Coast in Australia just as a public campaign was launched to keep the bears in Canada.

One of the cubs will leave at a later date to the Oga Aquarium, located 500 kilometres north of Tokyo, Japan.

"We are extremely concerned about the export of polar bears to foreign zoos," said Rob Laidlaw, projects manager for the World Society for the Protection of Animals, in a press release calling for the bears to stay in Canada.

"We are particularly alarmed that one of the Quebec cubs will end up in a Japanese aquarium. Japan has an appalling animal welfare record and very poor animal protection laws."

Laidlaw said the 65 polar bears that already live in Japanese zoos are kept in "horrendous conditions."

"If the Oga Aquarium were interested in helping bears, they'd rescue some of those currently kept in other Japanese zoos. No doubt, they want cuter, young bears for marketing purposes," Laidlaw said.

Last July, the mayor of Oga dressed up as a polar bear for the opening ceremonies of the Oga Aquarium's new polar bear enclosure because it lacked a live polar bear.

The male cubs were only five months old when their mother was shot and killed last May near Kangiqsualujjuaq.

Since then, they had been living at the Jardin zoologique du Québec zoo in Quebec City.

Because no zoo in Canada was able to permanently take them in, the cubs, nicknamed "Star" and "Coeur" (heart), will become what the zoo called "ambassadors from their species to the populations which will welcome them."

To decide where to place the polar bears, a special committee evaluated their needs and the facilities that could provide the cubs with a good, permanent home.

"After a painstaking study of five applications, it was decided that the new foster nations for the Kangiqsualujjauq cubs would be Australia and Japan," said a news release on the cubs' future homes.

The Oga Aquarium's newly-designed and built $2 million polar bear enclosure has a wave pool and climate control.

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