LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Louisville’s zoo director is taking a group to northern Canada to observe and research polar bears in advance of a new exhibit at the zoo opening in 2009.

The new $20.3 million cold-climate exhibit, called Glacier Run, will include polar bears, sea otters, sea eagles, seals and sea lions.

About a dozen people will travel with Louisville Zoo director John Walczak to Churchill, in northern Manitoba on the Hudson Bay.

The goal of the trip, Walczak said, is to build awareness of conservation and “what’s happening in the environment” of the polar bears.

The group will fly out Saturday. They will return to Louisville on Oct. 21, but Walczak will stay longer to learn more about polar bears. He will spend two extra days with another scientist who has spent several years observing them near Churchill.

Among the Louisville delegation to Canada will be 77-year-old Shirley Burwinkle, a longtime regular zoo visitor.

Polar bears, she said, “are rather exotic, and I like to watch their playfulness.” She said that she is “absolutely not scared.  I hope to get a better understanding of their habitat and eating habits and to see where they live.”

The polar bear population around Churchill is estimated to be from 1,000 to 1,400, said Wally Daudrich, a polar bear tour guide in Churchill.

In preparation for the exhibit’s construction, the zoo’s aging seal and sea-lion exhibit will be demolished, along with the existing polar bear exhibit by next year.

Both were built in the early 1970s, and their infrastructures have deteriorated. The zoo will move two gray seals and a 32-year-old female polar bear, Tahtsa, to the Indianapolis Zoo within a month.

Aquila, the zoo’s 14-year-old male polar bear, will remain on exhibit until demolition begins, said zoo spokeswoman Diana DeVaughn.

A companion sanctuary to the zoo’s new exhibit will open in 2010 and have arctic foxes, reindeer and snowy owls.

The zoo completed a popular $15 million Gorilla Forest exhibit that opened in 2002.

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Information from: The Courier-Journal, http://www.courier-journal.com

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)