....Jeanette Rix....

St Louis Zoo

Zookeeper feeding the polar bear 1942.

Though She Barely Survived Three Close Mauls, It's Still Love Among the Bruins for Ursula Bottcher

The Goldilocks of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus is a 5', 105-pound East German named Ursula Bottcher. The 10 co-stars in her unique act stand as high as 12 feet and weigh up to 1,600 pounds. But when she cracks her whip, the polar bears dance, prance and leap through a fiery hoop. By her grand finale, Bottcher's favorite, Alaska, is so docile that he lumbers up to fetch a cube of sugar from her lips. It looks like a kiss.








But there's a deadly risk involved. Ursula, 39, has survived three major attacks by her bears, the last one in Richmond a month ago. "You never can trust them," she says. When she began to waltz with Nixe in a 1975 performance in East Berlin, the 700-pound female suddenly floored her, then lunged for the jugular. Five other bears moved in for the kill. Ursula's partner, Manfred Horn, batted the beasts away with a wooden pole, and Ursula pluckily resumed the dance. "If I didn't do it with her right away, I'd lose the trick forever," she explains. "People applauded me a couple of minutes." Then it took 43 stitches to close the wounds on Bottcher's back, neck and shoulders.

The daughter of a Dresden road construction engineer and his wife, Ursula left home at 15 for the big top. She started as an usher and then learned to ride horses bareback. Her daring caught the eye of a lion tamer looking for a woman to jazz up the act—40 others had failed his audition out of fear. Ursula (her name, fittingly, comes from the Latin ursa, meaning she-bear) was soon training lions, leopards and tigers. In 1963 the East German regime entrusted her with eight polar bear cubs, and 11 years later in Madrid Ursula won the coveted Ernst RenkePlaskett circus award.





Then in 1976 the East Germans contracted Bottcher and her bears to Ringling. She gets a stipend for living expenses from her government and now calls the circus train of one of Ring-ling's two U.S. touring units her home. After a short marriage to a big top truck driver, she has lived for 13 years with ex-lion tamer Horn, now 40. They travel with two Yorkshire terriers and don't plan to have children. "We have 12 kids, two little ones and 10 big ones," figures Bottcher. "That's enough."

Ladies of the Steel Arena

Struppi Hanneford


Mable Stark


Ursula Botcher





Yvonne Berman


Harriet Beatty

Jeanette Rix

Pat White


Jacqueline Zerbini


Lillie Kristensen


Kathleen Marcan


Kay Rosaire


Trudy Wilson Strong

Sarah Houck


Tammy Wallenda


Susan Lacy

The Russian State Circus Company

Artistic Director and Producer - Yana Schevchenko.
Costume Designer - Natalia Chistova.
Composers – Konstanin Kobanoff.
The new program is a two-part show-divertissment, lasting 120 minutes (not counting the intermission).
The troupe consists of 35 artists.
The young director of the troupe, Yana Schevchenko, is an outstanding personality. With musical and artistic education to her credit, she acquired the experience of work in the circus as a gymnast and animal trainer and then she got down to producing acts, attractions and big programs. Having created the attractions "Exotic Jungles and the Amazon", "Aqua-World", and later the "Circus on Water" troupe she showed her worth as a tireless inventor, a romantic designer and a remarkably talented organizer. Yana is capable of devising a scenic costume and a new aerial apparatus, to work out a light score and to inspire her associates for putting into life the projects that, on the face of it, seemed most incredible.
In her new show she comes out with a fresh original lay-out of acts, more complicated stunt array, offering her artistic vision of the ice circus. The young artists perform their acts so ardently and skillfully that the spectators remain astonished and delighted throughout the whole show from the first to the last act.
The program features all circus art genres: very complicated combinations of acrobatic jumps over the skipping rope, jugglers with Indian clubs, illusion, equilibrists on unicycles, aerial gymnasts, choreographic compositions, acrobats with Rhein wheels, eccentrics, with all the acts being performed very swiftly on skates. Along with the clowns you will become involved in pranks and practical jokes!




The audience is invariably delighted with the acts featuring trained animals. None other program on ice has got such a diversity! The funny dogs, the lyrical duet with pigeons, the remarkable act with cats, as well as the attraction with California sea lions give rise to strong positive emotions of both children and adults.


It is in this program alone that you will be able to enjoy the world’s only unique attraction "Northern Lights" presented by the charming animal trainer Yulia Denisenko – the trained white Polar bears on ice! This is really a tremendous show!

The new program directed by Yana Schevchenko has already been seen in Russia, the Ukraine, Baltic states, Qatar, India, Hungary, China, France, Tunisia, Romania and the United States.

"Yana Schevchenko’s show is enchanting and fantastic" – this what the press unanimously writes, appraising the show, in different countries!

Environmentalists sue to broaden polar bear decision

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced polar bears would be listed as "threatened," but said he would not allow the Endangered Species Act to be "misused" to regulate global climate change.


Bush must consider greenhouse gas effects, they say.
From the Associated Press
1:38 PM PDT, May 20, 2008
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA -- Conservation groups announced Tuesday they are challenging Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's attempt to limit collateral economic damage from listing polar bears as a threatened species.

The Center for Biological Diversity/, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council will seek court intervention to address what they say in the No. 1 threat to polar bears: greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and melt Arctic sea ice.
Kempthorne, echoing President Bush, said last week the Endangered Species Act was the wrong tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Kempthorne that he would propose "common sense modifications" to make sure the polar bear listing would not set backdoor climate policy outside the normal system of political accountability.

The conservation groups said Kempthorne acted improperly.

"On the one hand, he's acknowledging that global warming is impacting polar bears," said Melanie Duchin of Greenpeace in Alaska. "On the other hand, he's not willing to do anything about it. We're asking the administration to uphold the spirit and intent of the Endangered Species Act."

In court filings Friday that amended their original lawsuit, the conservation groups asked U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland, Calif., to reject Kempthorne's administrative actions.

Interior spokesman Shane Wolfe said the department generally does not comment on pending litigation.

"The simple fact is that the Endangered Species Act is not a means to address the global challenges of climate change, which call for a global solution," he said.

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, warned that the court action could threaten domestic energy security and development, from offshore leasing to new coal-fired power plants and oil shale development.

"I can guarantee you this is the beginning of an endless series of court challenges and appeals that the national environmental organizations have been planning in their goal of using the polar bear issue for much larger purposes and goals," he said.

Kempthorne, calling the Endangered Species Act one of the most inflexible laws Congress ever passed, said last week he had no choice but to list polar bears as threatened because of overwhelming evidence that the bears' sea ice habitat had dramatically melted and that computer models indicate the trend was likely to continue.

However, Kempthorne said, the listing decision would be accompanied by a rule preventing "unintended harm to the society and economy of the United States."

The law did not allow interventions on greenhouse gas emissions, he said, because no "causal connection" had been demonstrated on individual polar bears from specific power plants, resource projects, government permits or activities in the lower 48 states.

Kassie Siegel, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, called that reasoning "completely ridiculous."

"It's a classic ploy of answering the wrong question,' she said. The issue, she said, is that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, and therefore harm polar bears.

"The notion that you need to tie the death of any polar bear to any particular carbon dioxide molecule is ridiculous," she said. "They're just making that up."

The law contains two key provisions for protecting listed animals.

One, Section 7, requires all federal agencies to ensure that their regulatory actions do not jeopardize the continued existence of a listed species or "result in the destruction or adverse modification" of their critical habitat.

The other, Section 9, applies to anyone from individuals to corporations. It prohibits them from the "taking" of an endangered species. Siegel said courts have routinely interpreted harm to include significant habitat degradation, and that the measure should be applied to proposed offshore oil and gas drilling in planned for polar bear habitat in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska's coasts.

Duchin, of Greenpeace, said most other industrial countries address emissions.

"There are ways to combat global warming and have a strong economy. That's been proven in Europe. It's not one or the other," Duchin said.

Polar bears use sea ice for hunting their primary prey, ringed seals. Advocates for additional protections say they have little chance of adapting to hunting on land. Polar bears also use ice for mating and reaching denning areas.

Kempthorne said federal agencies had made no link between polar bear deaths and oil and gas operations in Alaska, leading him to propose a rule allowing petroleum development to be regulated by the Marine Mammal Protection Act rather than the Endangered Species Act. That also was challenged.

Andrew Wetzler, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Kempthorne's rules would be challenged on procedure because they were implemented without proper public notice, a comment period or environmental review. Wetzler also said the MMPA does not contain requirements for protection of critical habitat, a recovery plan or agency consultation.

"We are confident the rules won't survive court review and that the polar bear will be given the full protection of the Endangered Species Act that it so badly needs," he said.

The groups also claim Kempthorne should have immediately listed polar bears as endangered rather than threatened based on the scientific evidence collected in the listing process. A species is "endangered" if it "is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range." "Threatened" means it's likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future.

A U.S. Geological Survey study generated in response to the listing petition predicted polar bears in Alaska could be wiped out by 2050.