{"id":20178,"date":"2026-03-11T08:56:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T08:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/she-gave-this-abused-polar-bear-a-beautiful-life\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:09:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:09:26","slug":"she-gave-this-abused-polar-bear-a-beautiful-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/friends-and-family\/pets\/she-gave-this-abused-polar-bear-a-beautiful-life\/","title":{"rendered":"She Gave This Abused Polar Bear a Beautiful Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On a cold November night in 2002, an unlikely group huddled in the FedEx hangar at Detroit Metro Airport. The animal activists, local media and zoo specialists were waiting for a plane carrying a unique passenger: an 18-year-old former circus performer\u2014a polar bear named B\u00e4rle.<\/p>\n<p>Like many circus animals, B\u00e4rle\u2019s past was heartbreaking. She was born along the west bank of Canada\u2019s Hudson Bay in 1984. Her mother was poached, and B\u00e4rle, just a cub, was shipped to Germany. She wound up with an animal trainer who took his bear show to the Suarez Brothers Circus in 1990.<\/p>\n<p>A circus that toured Mexico and the Caribbean was no place for <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/friends-and-family\/pets\/an-inspiring-if-unlikely-friendship\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">polar bears<\/a>, who thrive in extreme cold. For 13 years, B\u00e4rle (pronounced \u201cbearlah\u201d) and six others suffered the searing tropical heat and endured beatings at the hands of their trainers. They were forced to live in cages in which they couldn\u2019t lie down fully. In November 2002 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took custody of the seven polar bears, and a FedEx plane ferried them to zoos across the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Detroit was the last stop. Finally, B\u00e4rle\u2019s plane landed.<\/p>\n<p>The onlookers kept a respectful distance as the bear\u2019s crate was placed on the hangar floor. One of the specialists from the Detroit Zoo approached slowly. She knelt, laid her hand on the mesh of the cage and softly called B\u00e4rle\u2019s name. The bear, tired and ragged, locked eyes with her and smiled slightly. Else Poulsen smiled back.<\/p>\n<p>If anyone could speak the language of bears, it was Poulsen. She was a zookeeper and a trainer, but foremost, a bear behaviorist. She\u2019d found her calling in bettering the lives of abused and captive bears. She was known for coming face-to-face with these majestic creatures and asking, \u201cWho are you? What can I do for you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Poulsen\u2019s affinity for bears went back to childhood. Her family liked to visit <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/entertainment\/travel\/her-lifelong-love-affair-with-our-national-parks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">national parks<\/a>, and bear sightings were common. She was three years old when she saw her first bear\u2014a black bear catching a trout in a stream. Poulsen\u2019s parents told her something that stuck with her: Bears need room to be themselves.<\/p>\n<p>As an apprentice keeper at the Calgary Zoo in Canada in the early 1980s, Poulsen began to see the truth in that lesson. She worked with every type of animal at the zoo during her four-year apprenticeship and realized that it was the bears she understood most. She learned that they are smart and have complex emotional lives. As she told Laurel Neme, a writer for <i>National Geographic<\/i>, she learned that \u201cbears smile just like we do\u201d and \u201cevery bear is an individual.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Poulsen discovered that a bear\u2019s personal history affects its behavior and decisions, much as our personal history affects ours. She made sure to respect whatever the bears had been through\u2014whether it was years of forced performance and abuse, being separated from <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/category\/friends-and-family\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">family members<\/a> or living in cramped enclosures that were nothing like their natural habitats.<\/p>\n<p>She found out their individual stories and social needs and formed bonds with each bear. \u201cI understood early on that to make a difference in the life of a bear, I had to develop a meaningful relationship\u2014meaningful to the bear,\u201d Poulsen wrote in her book <i>Smiling Bears: A Zookeeper Explores the Behaviour and Emotional Life of Bears.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Bears need room to be themselves. From Snowball, a female polar bear who paced because of obsessive compulsive disorder, to Miggy, an eight-month-old American black bear cub who was motherless and in need of guidance, Poulsen observed and addressed each case with care. She might consult a neuroscientist, as with Snowball. Or she would create a distraction, such as the goldfish-filled pond liner she installed in Andean bear Melanka\u2019s enclosure. Or she\u2019d become part of the process herself\u2014for instance, occasionally biting Miggy\u2019s ear to discipline her like a mama bear would.<\/p>\n<p>Each bear she worked with touched her heart, perhaps B\u00e4rle most of all. Two weeks after her arrival at the Detroit Zoo, the polar bear started interacting with items in her enclosure. \u201cThere was straw everywhere, mixed with water, feces, food, urine, toys, boxes and feeders,\u201d Poulsen wrote in <i>B\u00e4rle\u2019s Story: One Polar Bear\u2019s Amazing Recovery from Life as a Circus Act.<\/i> \u201cIt was a delightful mess that I was only too happy to clean up so she could start the discovery process all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Empowering B\u00e4rle was imperative to her recovery. In the zoo\u2019s safe environment, she was encouraged to try new things and <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/the-beauty-in-mistakes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">make mistakes<\/a>. Poulsen wanted her to learn that she could make her own decisions. She wasn\u2019t going to be told what to do. There would be no more punishment, no more pain.<\/p>\n<p>Slowly, B\u00e4rle\u2019s behavior shifted. For enrichment, she went on daily scavenger hunts and used puzzle feeders. She played with a ball and had fun tossing items into her 150-gallon stock tank. She tried new foods and napped for hours at a time, which was crucial for both <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/health-and-wellness\/life-advice\/how-positive-thinking-can-improve-your-physical-health\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">her mental and physical healing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>B\u00e4rle settled in at the Detroit Zoo\u2019s Arctic Ring of Life, a four-acre tundra habitat with indoor and outdoor spaces and a freshwater pool. Seven other polar bears lived there, and she grew close to a male named Triton. Two years after her arrival, B\u00e4rle gave birth to a daughter, Talini. Watching mother and cub bob around in the water and \u201cchase\u201d seals that they saw through a thick underwater window, Poulsen knew B\u00e4rle\u2019s rehabilitation was complete. She had \u201clived to recover from her trauma through human compassion,\u201d Poulsen wrote in <i>B\u00e4rle\u2019s Story<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>B\u00e4rle died in July 2012 at the age of 27. Because of Poulsen, she got the chance to live the life she deserved. \u201cPeople always ask zookeepers who their favorite animal is,\u201d Poulsen told Laurel Neme. \u201cFor myself, it\u2019s the animal that needs you the most.\u201d Bears need room to be themselves. They also needed Else Poulsen.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><em>Did you enjoy this story? Subscribe to <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/our-magazines\/all-creatures-the-animals-who-share-our-lives\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><u><strong>All Creatures<\/strong><\/u><\/a><em> magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a cold November night in 2002, an unlikely group huddled in the FedEx hangar at Detroit Metro Airport. The animal activists, local media and zoo specialists were waiting for a plane carrying a unique passenger: an 18-year-old former circus performer\u2014a polar bear named B\u00e4rle. Like many circus animals, B\u00e4rle\u2019s past was heartbreaking. She was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":28760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[191],"tags":[203,75],"ppma_author":[1322],"class_list":["post-20178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pets","tag-community","tag-pets"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>She Gave This Abused Polar Bear a Beautiful Life - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"She Gave This Abused Polar Bear a Beautiful Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On a cold November night in 2002, an unlikely group huddled in the FedEx hangar at Detroit Metro Airport. The animal activists, local media and zoo specialists were waiting for a plane carrying a unique passenger: an 18-year-old former circus performer\u2014a polar bear named B\u00e4rle. Like many circus animals, B\u00e4rle\u2019s past was heartbreaking. 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