Tropical Singapore Zoo to keep polar bear - paper

SINGAPORE, May 3 (Reuters) Singapore Zoo is to keep its male polar bear, despite criticism from an animal rights group that the Arctic animal should not stay in a tropical climate, a newspaper reported today.

The Straits Times said managers had reversed a decision, taken last year, to move 16-year-old polar bear Inuka to a zoo in a temperate climate when his mother, Sheba, dies.

Executive director Fanny Lai told the paper the zoo was advised to keep Inuka by its Animal Welfare and Ethics Committee, which said moving him after the death of his mother would cause further stress.

Sheba is now 30, past the average life span of 25 years for polar bears in captivity.

''He's a Singapore boy and is well-adjusted to the conditions here,'' Tommy Koh, a former chairman of the committee, was quoted as saying.

Animal Concerns Research and Education Society, a local animal rights group, has said living conditions in Singapore -- just 140 km north of the Equator -- were not suitable for polar bears, citing the hot climate and a small enclosure at the zoo.

According to the Straits Times, 67 percent of more than 5,300 people polled in Singapore did not want Inuka, the first polar bear born in the tropics, to leave the city-state.

Singapore Zoo has said that it will not bring any more polar bears into the country.

Reuters SZ GC1130