GUANGZHOU, CHINA — Even with the ice caps melting and as few as 22,000 polar bears left in the wild, the saddest one of them all may live in Guangzhou, China, where tourists and mall-goers come by to take photographs of the lonely male bear.

Polar bears in the wild require massive amounts of space to walk, run and climb, as well as to hunt and forage for food. Confined to a small enclosure with bright-blue walls to suggest a poor attempt at replicating the look of his natural habitat, this polar bear’s life is nowhere near what it should be. The only constant he can rely on is the rapping noise on the walls of his glass jail cell, from people eager to take his picture. Welfare group Animals Asia has been pursuing a shutdown of the Grandview Aquarium in Guangzhou’s Grandview shopping center, which also houses six young beluga whales, five walrus calves, a wolf and Arctic foxes.

The Grandview Aquarium has responded by having its bear keeper provide piles of snow to increase the bear’s enrichment, but that’s about it for now. Animals Asia’s petition has garnered more than 285,000 signatures, yet visitors keep on coming, and the bear’s freedom remains nowhere in sight.