Arctic Tundra
It’s not unusual, come the middle of January or February, to hear a Chicagoan mutter, “Someday I’m going to escape this blankety-blank arctic tundra and move to Florida.” Admit it, you’ve probably said something similar yourself during a blasphemously cold winter.

That’s a bit of desperate hyperbole, of course, because although Chicago winters can be numbing, the real arctic tundra is the earth’s coldest biome. The average winter temperature is minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and sunlight lasts just longer than the blink of an eye. The sun doesn’t rise for about six months of the year.

The arctic tundra is the cap of the northern hemisphere. It encircles the north pole and extends south to include parts of Lapland, Scandinavia, Siberia, Alaska and Canada. No trees grow on the permanently frozen subsoil known as permafrost. However, shrubs, sedges, reindeer mosses, liverworts, grasses, lichen and several hundred varieties of flowers do sprout in the warmer (37-54 F) growing season, which lasts 50 to 60 days.

Common animals in the arctic tundra include squirrels and hares, foxes, wolves and polar bears and more than 100 species of migrating birds, including the Baikal teal, which in summer feeds on insects that find a home in the marshes that form in the thin layer of thawed top soil.

The polar bear (Ursus maritimus) may be the most famous resident of the arctic tundra. Weighing a little more than a pound at birth, male polar bears can top 1,500 pounds. Humans are the bears’ biggest threat. The world population of polar bears is estimated at a stable 22,000 to 25,000. But they are potentially threatened by hunting, warming trends in the arctic and pollution. According to Polar Bears International (PBI), studies indicate that high levels of PCBs in the blubber of bears appear to hamper their immune systems.

Legal hunting of bears is now mostly confined to indigenous people who have lived in the region for centuries. PBI is also studying the effects of ecotourism and population growth, both of which are anticipated to increase. “One of the things the Polar Bear Species Survival Plan is studying is the number of orphan cubs in the wild and the reason they’ve been orphaned,” says Megan Wilson, curator of Regenstein African Journey and Carnivores, who attended a recent planning meeting for the SSP.

The zoo’s two bears, 5-year-old siblings Anana and Lee can be seen at the Levine Family Polar Bear Plaza. They were born in November 1999. Anana at about 450 pounds, and Lee, closer to 700, still have a few pounds to go before reaching full physical maturity. Their daily diet includes four or five pounds of fish, six to 12 pounds of polar bear chow and a pound of produce. They also receive bones twice weekly for enrichment and to help control tartar. They need every bit of the food because they burn up lots of energy when climbing the rocks in their exhibit and swimming in the 266,000-gallon pool, maintained at 59 degrees during winter.

Down at the zoo’s waterfowl lagoons you can see three Baikal teals (Anas formosa), two males and a female. During winter’s most bitter months, their arctic cousins migrate south to the edges of the tundra, where they eat seeds of plants, rice, aquatic invertebrates and fish from the freshwater lakes, rivers, reservoirs and farmland of eastern Asia.

Excessive hunting had reduced the duck population to an endangered 40,000 in the 1980, but the species has rebounded over the last 10 to 15 years to nearly 250,000. The Baikal (pronounced by-kahl’) is named after Siberia’s Lake Baikal, the oldest, largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world. Also known as a spectacled, clucking and formosa duck, the Baikal is easily distinguished from the other species with which it shares the zoo lagoon by its green, white and black head pattern (bringing to mind a Harlequin clown face), dark-spotted pinkish breast and gray flanks.

“There’s a sort of hierarchy on the waterfowl pond,” says Chris Prah, lead keeper of outdoor birds. “The Baikal teals are a timid species when compared to the trumpeter swans, the most dominant birds out there, and the mallards. But they’ve learned to fit in, especially when it comes to feeding time.” The Baikals receive a daily diet of a special waterfowl maintenance pellet, along with a variety of chopped greens.

Says Prah: “We try to condition the teals to come up on land where they have a better chance of getting their food without being disturbed by other birds.”