I saw a bear at the weekend, it was great.
Granted it was at Whipsnade zoo and I was safely on the right side of the fence but given that the brown bear (Ursos arctos), as this was, used to live in England what I liked most about seeing this animal, was that the woodland habitat in its enclosure was probably not too dissimilar to its natural setting.
The same couldn't be said for the lions and tigers, but bears... yes.
This reminded me of a TED talk I saw last year about re-wilding. This is the interesting idea of reintroducing the big, charismatic animals that used to live here like, wolf, lynx and bison.
Sounds scary to think of going for a stroll with the possibility of a bear encounter, but these animals are so cool I would happily support some trials to bring them back to the UK and make our countryside that much more interesting.
This image was taken in Finland by Edwin Kats rspb-images.com, excellent job!