Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 15, 2010

Flocke is a polar bear cub who was born in captivity at the Nuremberg Zoo in 2007. A few weeks after her birth, she was removed from her mother's care after concerns were raised for her safety. Although the zoo had established a strict non-interference policy with its animals, officials chose to raise the cub by hand. This decision came at a time when the zoo was receiving negative attention from the media after another female polar bear reportedly ate her newly born cubs. Similar to the excitement around Knut, a captive-born and handraised polar bear at the Berlin Zoo, Flocke ("flake" in German) quickly became a media sensation. After she debuted to the public on 8 April 2008, her name was trademarked by the zoo and her image appeared on toys and in advertisements throughout the city. The zoo announced in May 2008 that United Nations Environment Program chief Achim Steiner would be Flocke's official patron with the hope of using the bear as an ambassador to encourage awareness of climate change. In late 2008, a Russian-born male polar bear named Rasputin was introduced to Flocke's enclosure in the hopes that she would gain valuable socializing skills with a member of her own species. A year later, it was announced that both bears would relocate to Marineland in southern France sometime in 2010. (more...)

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