On Wednesday, January 26th, 2005, AP Photographer, Frank Hormann captured two seven week-old polar bear cubs.

The cubs live at the Rostock Zoo in northern Germany. For a short time the babies were separated from their mother, Vienna while being weighed.

While these animals are safe from harm, in other parts of the world, polar bears are not.

Thanks to people like Brigitte Bardot, the famous French actress-turned-ardent animal rights activist, the 25,000 polar bears in existence today have a greater fighting chance.

Recently, the '50's, '60's and early '70's French silver screen goddess, wrote an open letter to Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. In this letter Bardot protested plans to allow rich tourists to shoot polar bears and keep their pelts as souvenirs. Unfortunately, her letter has not stopped the availability of hunting permits.

Greenland has some 2,700 professional hunters. They currently make between 6,000 and 9,000 kroner (1,055-1,580 dollars, 806-1,210 euros) per pelt on the local market.

By contrast, hunters in Canada, the only country in the world that presently allows tourists to hunt polar bears, can bring in as much as 150,000 kroner for a souvenir pelt.

Polar bears, trying to survive in Greenland, already have the affects of global warming working against them.

Global warming is threatening the bears by depriving them of food such as seals, walruses and narwhales (small Arctic whales) in Greenland, the world's largest island, where many of these hunts take place.

The warmer temperatures have already melted much of the ice making it more difficult to reach the bears' feeding grounds.

According to international experts gathered in Greenland's capital of Nuuk last fall, the Arctic ice cap has shrunk by 17 percent over the last 20 years.

An eight-nation report in November said that the Arctic was warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet due to global warming, blamed by most scientists on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.

While the Danes claim they are dependent on polar bear hunts in Greenland, the seventy year-old French actress who became an animal activist continues to use her celebrity status to bring awareness to the continued "massacre of this mythical symbol of the frozen north," as she calls it.

On Monday, Bardot's efforts to protect these innocent bears did not stop Greenland Fishing and Hunting Minister Rasmus Frederiksen from moving forward in continuing to offer permits to hunters.

He told the AFP, "We expect to announce new rules this summer when we'll set an annual cull quota."

In defense of Bardot, one of the world's leading animal rights activists, and in defense of the remaining polar bears in Greenland, Environment Minister Jens Napaattoq said he would like the world's largest island, which already allows Greenlandic professional hunters to kill a certain number of polar bears each year, to set the annual souvenir quota at 30 animals.

Polar bear hunting season in Greenland begins on September 1st.

According to the first census of the bears' population announced earlier this month, about 3,000 polar bears live around the Arctic Barents Sea off northern Europe.

The census serves as a benchmark to judge bears' vulnerability to melting ice, pollution and hunting.

The survey, which was conducted by Russian, British and Norwegian researchers, showed that bear numbers in the region were at the bottom of previous rough estimates of 3,000 to 5,000.

The total is about 12 per cent of the estimated global population of 25,000 polar bears.

Environment Minister Knut Arild Hareide said about this survey:

The count gives us a good starting point for further protection of this creature.

We know that polar bears are exposed to environmental poisons and climate change in the Arctic.

To learn more about the Paris-based "Foundation Brigitte Bardot" which is focused on the protectection and welfare of animals go to:

57,000 donors have supported getting 185 inspectors out in the field.

In 1995, an adoption department of the foundation was founded.

The biggest battles the BBF currently faces are animal captivity, fur trade, animals for slaughter, experiments on animals, hunting, animal fights, the desertion of pets and ritual slaughtering of animals.

To learn more about the Rostock Zoo where Vienna's cubs were born, go to:

Rostock got its start as a deer enclosure in 1899.

Their web site is all "auf Deutsch" so, if you do not speak German, you will need to translate it. However, the photos alone of Mama Vienna giving birth to the cubs speaks a universal language of love and care.

Congratulations to all those who are working "in the field" and at zoos around the world looking after the current and future generations of polar bears.

Inspire & Be Inspired.

Here's to healthy, adventuresome, soulful, "bear necessity" living!

~ Jennifer Carolyn King