A female polar bear arrives in the Highlands today to join two males, with a view to rearing a new generation within sight of the Cairngorms.
Victoria will be the only female polar bear currently in the UK. She will be delivered to the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig near Aviemore from Aalborg Zoo in Denmark, although she was born in 1996 at Rostock Zoo in Germany.
Males Walker and Arktos are already resident.
Douglas Richardson, Head of Living Collections for Highland Wildlife Park, said:
"Victoria will need to settle in, but visitors should be able to meet our new arrival in a couple of weeks. Her enclosure is completely separate to Walker and Arktos', as male and female polar bears live separately in the wild. During the polar bear breeding season, which generally falls between March and May, we will gradually introduce her to Arktos and the two will stay together until the two hopefully mate, when the male will be returned to the bachelor enclosure. "
He said Victoria's large enclosure featured a pond and plenty of natural ground for her to explore. There was an adjacent smaller holding enclosure with its own pool that will initially house the male until the signs are right for the introduction.
He said "This extra enclosure allows us to also use a visiting male from another zoo, should the breeding programme recommend it, and we are not aware of any other polar bear breeding facility that has this degree of flexibility.
"A polar bear has not been born in the UK for many years and we hope that our novel approach to enclosure design and the correspondingly unique husbandry regime will quickly translate into success."
Victoria previously gave birth to cubs in 2008. Milak, her first, was seen online by hundreds of thousands of people from 75 countries around the world who followed the early days of the cub's life. It was one of the first times webcams had made that possible. In December Milak was transported to Zoo Saint-Félicien in Quebec.
The last female polar bear to live in the UK was Mercedes, who died at the park in April 2011 aged around 30 years old. Originally from Canada she was put down after suffering health problems.
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