Lee, a 23-year-old male polar bear, returns to Columbus Zoo
The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium is welcoming back a familiar face: Lee, a 23-year-old polar bear who had been living at the Louisville Zoo in Kentucky since 2020.
Lee, who spent two years in Columbus beginning in 2018, returned Thursday afternoon after originally being moved to make sure that other polar bears would have adequate space in Columbus, according to zoo officials.
“We are proud to be a part of collaborative efforts working to help polar bears, and we’re particularly excited to welcome Lee back to the Columbus Zoo,” Nikki Smith, curator of the Columbus Zoo’s North America and Polar Frontier regions, said in a news release.
Multiple staff members from the Columbus Zoo accompanied Lee during the drive from Louisville to ensure that he arrived safely. Staff have continued to observe Lee closely since his arrival and report that he is settling in very well, according to a news release.
Lee first arrived at the Columbus Zoo from the Denver Zoo in November 2018. While he lived in Columbus, he sired his first cub, Kulu, who was born on Thanksgiving Day in 2019 to mother Aurora.
At that time, Columbus also was home to Aurora’s twin sister, Anana. To ensure that Aurora and her cub, as well as Anana — who was preparing to den with the possibility of having cubs — had plenty of space for rearing their offspring, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan recommended that Lee be placed in Louisville, where he moved in August 2020.
After being weaned from his mother, Kulu moved to the Como Park Zoo in Minnesota in October 2021.
Lee’s relationship with the polar bears in Columbus continued even after he was relocated. In March, officials at the Columbus Zoo collaborated with a team led by Erin Curry of the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Lindner Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife to perform artificial insemination on Aurora and Anana with shipped semen from Lee.
The process is a relatively new reproductive technology in polar bears. Among the 14 attempts in North America — and some 20 attempts worldwide — none have produced offspring, zoo officials said. This includes the attempts in Columbus.
That said, the Columbus Zoo has been successful in its polar bear breeding program
overall with five surviving cubs born since the Zoo’s Polar Frontier region opened in 2010. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan has recommended that Lee be paired with 16-year-old Aurora at the zoo in the hopes of producing more cubs in the future.
Anana was euthanized in October 2022 when her health rapidly declined due to complications from an autoimmune disease.
The births are important to the survival of polar bears, which in 2008 became the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened primarily due to climate change. Polar bear populations are declining due to the disappearance of sea ice, which they need for hunting seals, their primary food source, according to the zoo. Experts estimate that only 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears remain, and that if trends continue, twothirds of the polar bear population could disappear by the year 2050.
Since 1998, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium has contributed more than $300,000 to projects benefiting polar bears in the Arctic. cbehrens@dispatch.com @Colebehr_report