Yakutsk’s Orto Doydu Zoo celebrated a joyous event at the end of December 2016 when the polar bear Kolymana gave birth to a bear cub. A video camera has been installed in the artificial den, but it is not possible to determine the cub’s sex yet.  

The cub’s father, a polar bear named Lomonosov, arrived in Yakutia from the St Petersburg zoo. As for Kolymana, she had a rocky road in life and was found in the spring of 2012 by inspectors from the Yakutia Environmental Protection Ministry’s Nizhnekolymsk Inspectorate. 

“We have long-established cooperation with the inspectors from the Bear Islands Reserve located in the Kolyma Gulf in the East Siberian Sea”, said polar bear expert Viktor Nikiforov. “I remember well on 12 April 2012, my colleagues called me by satellite phone in Moscow and said that they had found a bear cub on the island of Chetyryokhstolbovoy. They spent several days searching for the cub’s mother, but in vain. The bear cub was named Kolymana after the Kolyma River,” he said. 

Workers at the Orto Doydu Zoo say that Kolymana’s bear cub will make its first public appearance on 27 February 2017, on International Polar Bear Day.

(Photo © Fyodor Yakovlev)