Polar bears, traditionally among the public's favourite zoo animals, may soon be banned from Britain if a new campaign by animal lovers is successful.
Zoo Check, the animal welfare organisation founded by the actors Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, is demanding that zoos should not have their licences renewed unless they agree to phase them out by not replacing them after they die.
The organisation is to lobby the secretary of state for the environment and all local councils responsible for issuing licences to zoos in the next 18 months over what it claims is the "severe distress" suffered by bears in captivity.
Fifteen polar bears are now kept in seven different British zoos and, according to research funded by Zoo Check, more than half of these are "psychotic."
They pass their days in endless, meaningless pacing and swaying movements and other stereotypic habits (the technical term for pointless repetitive behaviour). Sometimes they multilate themselves.
The research also shows that cubs born in captivity are more than twice as likely to die before adulthood as those born in the wild.
There was a public outcry last week over the tragedy in which an 11-year-old boy was mauled to death and eaten by polar bears after he climbed into their compound in a zoo in New York. The bears were subsequently shot. But, says Zoo Check, the bears - which are carnivorous opportunists in the wild - were acting purely on instinct.
"I feel a great deal of sympathy for the boy's parents," said Travers, director of Zoo Check. "But what happened highlighted a serious problem. Keeping deranged polar bears for our entertainment, wherever it is, is simply unacceptable."
Zoo Check's findings on polar bears are supported in a study by the RSPCA. "Polar bears are not an endangered species," says Stefan Ormrod, the society's chief wildlife officer who wrote the study. "There is no conservation argument for keeping them."
Since polar bears were given full international protection in 1973, the population in the five main arctic nations (the Soviet Union, Denmark, the United States, Canada and Norway) has doubled. Ormrod concludes that no zoo could provide enough space and stimulation to keep such an active and inquisitive species mentally healthy.
This view is supported by Bristol Zoo, which says it has no intention of replacing its three polar bears - Nina, Janina and Misha - when they die. The zoo is offering Janina free of charge to anyone who will take her now. And Misha, 22, is so severely disturbed that she is sometimes taken off public display.
"Quite frankly the bears are an embarrassment to us," said Geoffrey Greed, director of the zoo. "But that does not mean we have the right to shoot them."
London Zoo is also thinking seriously about its polar bear policy. Its two, Pipiluk and Mosha, were sent to Dudley Zoo in the Midlands when London closed the Mappin terraces two years ago.
However, John Knowles of the National Federation of Zoos, which represents 55 of Britain's largest zoos, said he did not agree with a "blanket ruling" that no British zoo be allowed to keep polar bears. "We do, after all, need to understand their behaviour patterns should they be threatened with extinction in future."
Given the problems of keeping polar bears, Knowles says: "I would question if there is any point in a zoo giving up its limited resources to maintain them."
It is this economic factor which will ultimately decide whether British zoos will keep their bears. The days in the early 1950s when Brumas, London Zoo's famous baby polar bear, could draw in crowds of 100,000 over one weekend appear to have long gone. Annual attendance figures to the zoo have almost halved since then.
