facebook.com/SavePolarBearArthurArturo the polar bear is living a miserable life. Just look at him.
Arturo lives at the Mendoza Zoo in Argentina, which seems like no place for a polar bear. And which may also be why he's the last polar bear in Argentina. "[Arturo] is basically going insane," Bill McDonald, CEO of the Winnipeg Humane Society, says in an interview with CBC News.
For 20 years, Arturo has experienced temperatures in the mid-to-high 60s (Fahrenheit), with limited access to pools of water, and, recently he lost his only polar bear companion, Pelusa.
Sadly, an effort to relocate Arturo to the International Polar Bear Conservation Centre in Canada, a home that would provide him the proper atmosphere and medical needs, failed. The Assiniboine Park Conservancy in Winnipeg, where the Centre is located, offered to take Arturo but the Mendoza Zoo was unable to provide the necessary records to make the move.
Assiniboine officials had determined that Arturo's living conditions in Argentina were so poor, that they were willing to make the risky transport, not sure if the polar bear would survive the trip. Still, Mendoza Zoo refused to give him up.
"Arturo is in a small cage, with no space to walk, he has no stimulation, and the weather is awful for a polar bear," Canadian professor Maria Fernanda Arentsen told The Daily News. Arentsen has been one of the leaders in the push to relocate the bear.
But she's not alone. Now, the Internet has taken over. A Greenpeace petition has received over 150,000 signatures and will be sent to the Argentinean president, while a similar petition on Change.org has more than 60,000 signatures. There are Facebook pages dedicated to Arturo and even celebs (like Cher) have taken up the cause.
Only time will tell what becomes of Arturo, the so-called saddest animal in the world, but we're hoping to see a smile on his face in the near future.