Yes, those bears are really playing hockey

A video of bears playing ice hockey has (again) gone viral recently. The two-minute clip (above) shows brown bears sliding around a rink, deking, shoving and slap-shooting.

The bears are outfitted with sticks and jerseys as a rather sizable crowd watches. The animals actually play the sport surprisingly well. But there's no way this can be real, right?

Oh, it's a very real.

Back in May, the New York Times' Slap Shot hockey blog did a roundup of all of the crazy bear hockey videos floating around. We thought it was worth pointing out since there still seem to be questions as to whether a bear can be taught to rock the rink.

The video has been around for more than a year, yet people continue to doubt its authenticity. It appears there aren't any bear-hockey-CGI effects going on. This is a real (crazy) Russian phenomenon.

We're going to spend the rest of the day thinking of good bear puns. Like Wayne Grizzly. Or Mario Le Boo Boo. Or Sidney Crosbear. Or Jaromir Yogi. C'mon, help us out in the comments.

-- Mark Milian (Follow on Twitter @markmilian)

District Court judge: Yellowstone's grizzly bears must stay on endangered species list

Billings, Mont. — A judge says the government must keep Yellowstone-area grizzly bears on the list of threatened and endangered species, denying an attempt by federal officials to reverse an earlier court ruling.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service two years ago said grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park had recovered from near-extermination and no longer needed protections under the Endangered Species Act.

But in September, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy said climate change and lax regulations threatened to undermine the bears' recovery. After Molloy ordered the animals back onto the threatened list, government attorneys asked that he reconsider, saying the bear would thrive without sweeping federal protections.

In an order Tuesday, Molloy rejected the government's argument and confirmed his earlier ruling.

-- Associated Press

Photo: A family of grizzly bears in the Cougar Flats area of Yellowstone National Park. Photo credit: Steve Ard / Associated Press

Bizarre baldness strikes female spectacled bears in Leipzig zoo

It's a tough time to be a spectacled bear at the zoo in Leipzig, Germany -- at least, it's a tough time to be a female spectacled bear.  Veterinarians are struggling to determine why the zoo's female spectacled bears have suddenly lost nearly all their fur, which is typically shaggy for both females and males of their species.  There has been speculation that a genetic defect could be responsible, but beyond the obvious hair loss and its accompanying itchiness, no other symptoms have been noted in the affected bears.

The U.K.'s Daily Mail reports that zoogoers have turned out in droves to see the bizarre, as-yet-unexplained sight of the balding bears.  Dolores, above, and Lolita, another female, have retained tufts of fur around their faces and chests.  Meanwhile, according to the Sun, keepers have contacted a number of other zoos worldwide to ask for advice on the bizarre malady.

Spectacled bears are native to South America and are sometimes called Andean bears, after the mountain range they occupy.  They are South America's only native bear, and they're typically distinguishable (though you wouldn't know it from the photo of poor Dolores here) by eyeglass-shaped markings on their faces. 

U.S. seeks tougher protections for polar bear

With global warming shrinking Arctic sea ice that polar bears depend upon for survival, the United States is seeking to remove another major threat: international trade in the bears' fur and other parts.

In a proposal filed this week, the Interior Department asked other countries to support a ban on the commercial trade of polar bears and to strictly regulate trophy hunting. The request, if approved, would give the bear the most stringent protection afforded under an international convention to protect endangered species.

It would also upgrade protections for the bear internationally for the first time since 1975, when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, required export permits for the polar bear.

Since then, mounting scientific evidence has shown that Arctic sea ice is melting and suggests that global warming may cause the disappearance of summer sea ice in 30 years.

Your minivan is one big pic-a-nic basket, say Yosemite's black bears

This just in: Bears (at least, Yosemite National Park's black bears) view your minivan as one big, delicious pic-a-nic basket. 

A new report in the Journal of Mammalogy has the details of data collected on bear-related vehicle break-ins -- more than 900 of them -- between 2001 and 2007 at Yosemite. Researchers broke the incidents down by vehicle type, comparing the break-in data with available statistics on the types of vehicles that entered the park.

What they found might not be too surprising: Minivans, often filled with jam-handed kids, accounted for 26% of the vehicles broken into by bears. (Next on the list: SUVs, which accounted for 22.5% of the break-ins.  17.1% of the vehicles were small cars, 13.7% were sedans and 11.9% were trucks, The Times' Daily Travel & Deal Blog reports. About 9% of the bear break-ins were distributed among other vehicle types.) 

And it's not just that there were more minivans to break into, according to Nature, which points out that during a single yearlong period during the study (2004-2005), 29% of the break-ins involved minivans -- although they only accounted for 7% of the total vehicles in the park.

Kelly Ann Walz killed by her pet black bear

A woman was killed by a captive 350-pound black bear as she cleaned its cage Sunday night, officials said Monday as they revealed her husband, an exotic pet dealer, was operating with an expired license.

Kelly Ann Walz, 37, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Tim Conway, an information and education supervisor with the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Michael Walz's license to keep and sell exotic animals expired in June of 2008, Conway said. He called the lapse a technicality.

Walz, who has been licensed since 1994, reported to authorities in 2007 that he kept a lion, cougar, jaguar, tiger, black bear, leopard and two servals on the property in Ross Township, a rural area in the Pocono Mountains, about 20 miles northeast of Allentown.

Kelly Ann Walz went into the bear's 15-by-15-foot steel and concrete cage about 5 p.m. Sunday, throwing a shovelful of dog food to one side to distract the bear while she cleaned the other side, Conway said. At some point the bear turned on her and attacked.

Knut the polar bear meets his future roommate, gets slapped

Berlin's celebrity polar bear, Knut, has met his future roommate at last -- sans the fence that has separated the two since the newcomer arrived from Munich earlier this month.

That newcomer is Gianna (also known as Giovanna), a young female polar bear who normally lives at Munich's Hellebrunn Zoo.  She's expected to stay with Knut at the Berlin Zoo for about nine months while her Munich enclosure is renovated.  While keepers hope that the two will strike up a friendship -- which would be a first for Knut, who hasn't been housed with another polar bear since his mother rejected him as a cub -- fans hoping for romance to blossom aren't likely to get their wish any time soon.  Polar bears don't reach sexual maturity until they're about 5 years of age, still a few years off for both Knut (who will turn three later this year) and Gianna. 

It's clear already that Gianna isn't going to put up with any guff from Knut (perhaps she's heard the rumors that circulated last year labeling him a "publicity-addicted psycho"?); during the bears' initial meeting Tuesday morning, she lost no time in smacking him upside the head.  Previously, keepers at the Munich zoo had attempted to introduce her to a potential future mate, but Gianna was less than impressed and had to be relocated to another enclosure.  (Incidentally, her roommate at the enclosure to which she was moved happened to be Knut's grandmother!)

Keeper Heiner Klös told German news source Spiegel that Knut was "completely surprised and astounded" to discover Gianna in his enclosure and said he was shy in her presence.  The two met again this morning, and the zoo plans to introduce them slowly, gradually increasing the amount of time they spend together and watching them closely for signs of aggression or trouble.

RELATED:
Zoo custody dispute over Knut the polar bear ends; he'll remain in Berlin
German zoos battle over Knut the polar bear's profits

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Gianna (left foreground) watches Knut (right background) during their first meeting Tuesday.  Credit: Klaus Dietmar Gabbert / European Pressphoto Agency

Vail woman scares away bear in her home with pillow

Here's a pillow fight Sally Rebehn is glad she won.

Confronted by a bear in the bedroom of her west Vail home a few weeks ago, Rebehn screamed and decided to fling a pillow at the animal, which was standing on its hind legs 12 feet from her. The pillow attack worked.

Rebehn said the bear fled to another room of the home, where Rebehn lives with her son's family. Police eventually chased away the bear, along with her three cubs, including one that also got into the home.

"I was so scared. I bet the people across the creek thought I was getting murdered," Rebehn said. She said she first thought it was her dog that had followed her into her bedroom.

"No way I thought there would be a bear in the bedroom," she told the Vail Daily newspaper Tuesday.

Polar bear Knut to get a female roommate

Everyone's favorite celebrity polar bear, Knut, finally has some company at the Berlin Zoo in the form of a female polar bear named Giovanna. 

Knut, now nearly 3 years old, first captured the attention of animal lovers around the world shortly after his birth in late 2006, when his mother rejected him and his sibling. The sibling didn't survive, but Knut did due to the efforts of his keeper, Thomas Doerflein, who decided to raise him by hand. (Doerflein died last year at age 44.)

Since the death of his sibling, Knut has been a solitary figure in the Berlin Zoo's polar bear enclosure.  (Last December, he even attracted the attention of a man who leapt into the water-filled ditch surrounding the exhibit, later claiming that he'd taken the bizarre action because Knut seemed "sad and lonely, and that he wanted to keep him company," according to a Berlin police department spokesperson.) 

Until now.  Giovanna, a 3-year-old polar bear from Munich's Hellebrunn Zoo, arrived in Berlin earlier this month. Her enclosure at the Munich zoo is being renovated, so she needed a temporary home; Knut's keepers hope that the two will form a friendly bond that could turn romantic down the line. (Polar bears don't typically reach sexual maturity until they're about 5 years of age.)

Judge renews protected status for Yellowstone's grizzly bears

According to U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, the grizzly bear's Yellowstone population is not quite as recovered as Bush administration officials thought when they stripped the animals of their Endangered Species Act protections in 2007.  In a ruling delivered by Judge Molloy today, the protected status of the bears -- about 600 of them living within the confines of the park itself and in the surrounding area, including areas in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming -- was renewed, meaning that they will once again be considered a threatened population.

Among the reasons Molloy gave for reinstating the grizzlies' protected status was, interestingly, climate change.  Grizzlies are omnivorous, and the Yellowstone population relies heavily on nuts from a tree called the whitebark pine for food.  But, in large part due to climate change that has allowed pine-killing beetles to thrive, the number of whitebark pines in the area has declined sharply in recent years, according to the Associated Press.  Forest fires have also put a damper on the growth of the whitebark pines.  Another issue noted by Molloy in his ruling, our colleagues at the Greenspace blog report, was a system of monitoring the bears' numbers with which he found fault:

The judge said the monitoring program designed to maintain the bear population at more than 500 bears has no enforcement mechanism in case numbers decline.

"Even if the monitoring were enforceable, the monitoring itself does nothing to protect the grizzly bear population," the judge wrote. "Instead, there is only a promise of future, unenforceable actions. Promises of future, speculative action are not existing regulatory mechanisms," he said.

Environmental advocates, naturally, have expressed their approval of the ruling. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment, offering a statement to the Associated Press through a spokesman. "We're going to take some time with this rule because it's so significant," Matt Kales told the AP. "This is obviously a pretty big policy matter for us. Our first and foremost concern remains with the status of the bear."

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: A grizzly forages for food in a meadow near Canyon Village in Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Los Angeles Times