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Polar bear sport hunt under threat from U.S.

Powerful environmental groups lobby for ban on Nunavut trophies

JANE GEORGE

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The Government of Nunavut still hasn't been able to produce a report outlining the traditional knowledge they used to raise polar bear quotas earlier this year. If they can't supply one, U.S. sports hunters may be barred from importing polar bear trophies back to their country. (PHOTO COURTESY OF ANDREW DEROCHER)

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Polar bear trophies from Nunavut could be banned from the United States, crippling the territory’s annual polar bear sports hunt, if information isn’t released soon about the traditional knowledge that was used to establish new quotas and management plans for the species.

The sports hunt brings about $1 million into Nunavut every year.

In February, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the Canadian Wildlife Service for more information on management practices in Nunavut so it could determine whether the harvest is based on scientifically-sound quotas that sustain the polar bear population.

The agency wanted to learn more about the traditional knowledge study used to set the new quotas, which increased Nunavut’s annual polar bear harvest by 114 to 518.

“We did receive a response from them in early June that said they were working on it, so we’re hoping to see something soon,” said Lisa Lierheimer, a spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in an interview from Washington, D.C.

But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may not be able to wait much longer because powerful environmental groups are pushing it to make a decision.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace, international conservation organizations with a combined membership of over 650,000 people, have joined with the Center for Biological Diversity and are petitioning the agency to list the polar bear species as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

The petition was filed in February.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was required to make an initial determination on the petition within 90 days — which means its decision could come down any day.

The 154-page petition, which contains scientific information, as well a supplemental letter, cites global warming as the primary threat to polar bears, in addition to other threats such as oil and gas development in the Arctic, high levels of contaminants in polar bear tissues, and over-hunting of some populations in Canada, Greenland, and Russia.

Listing a species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act means U.S. federal agencies must ensure that any action carried out, authorized, or funded by the U.S. government will not “jeopardize the continued existence” of polar bears, or adversely modify their critical habitat.

If polar bears are declared to be a “threatened” population under the Endangered Species Act, even more restrictive measures would kick in under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the issuance to U.S. sport hunters would “most likely” be stopped, Leirheimer said.

“The current way that trophies are permitted to be brought in would not be allowed,” Lierheimer said.

There’s a precedent for the banning of polar bear trophies.

In January, 2001, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stopped the issuance of any more permits for importing sports-hunted polar bear trophies from the M’Clintock Channel into the U.S. for bears hunted after May 31, 2000.

Due to the low estimates for the M’Clintock Channel polar bear population, it decided not to condone any more hunting there, by clamping down on import permits.

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