Sunny Weekend Alert
The Zoo anticipates high attendance on sunny weekends. Parking is limited, so arrive early, carpool, and check our site / social pages often for more updates!
Our Wild Arctic Beauty—Meet Yura
The North Carolina Zoo and the North Carolina Zoo Society invited the public to help name a wild polar bear that both organizations jointly adopted symbolically through Polar Bears International (PBI). The winning name was Yura, which is Inuit for "one who is beautiful." Thank you to everyone that helped name our wild Arctic beauty!
Yura lives in the wild with her two yearling cubs—boy and girl—and is fitted with a GPS collar to track her movements. This collaring program through Polar Bears International has been active for several decades, providing one of the best long-term monitoring of female polar bears in the world. Collars last up to one year, dropping off automatically on a pre-programmed date. You can follow Yura's movements in the wild with the online Polar Bear tracker. Her collar ID is X33805.
PBI is the leading polar bear conservation group in the world solely dedicated to conserving wild polar bears and their threatened Arctic environment. The North Carolina Zoo has served as an official Arctic Ambassador Center for PBI since 2009. The Zoo is among an elite group of 40 zoos, aquariums and museums that partner with them on conservation efforts. The North Carolina Zoo Society supports polar bear conservation work through PBI.
The tracker is updated once a week, usually on Monday, from October to July each year.
The North Carolina Zoo is also home to a breeding pair of polar bears: female Anana and male Nikita that you can visit daily!