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U.S. moves closer to polar bear trophy ban

Nunavut hunters could be hit hard

JANE GEORGE

If U.S. wildlife regulators decide polar bears are in danger, American sports hunters won't be allowed to bring trophies home from hunts in Nunavut.
(FILE PHOTO)

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Sports hunters now spend about $2.9 million each year on the polar bear sports hunt in Nunavut, according to a study by McGill University researcher George Wenzel. From that, Inuit get about $1.5 million.

On Feb. 7, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will respond to a petition launched by conservation groups to consider listing the polar bear as a species at risk under U.S. law.

The review of polar bears is expected to draw attention to the devastating effects of climate change in the Arctic.

“If this review brings climate change into the U.S. psyche, that would be the good news. Of course, the bad news is, if polar bears are found to be threatened, is that individual hunters will definitely will see a serious impact on their livelihood and that is a big concern,” said Andrew Derocher, chair of the Polar Bear Specialists Group.

The decision to review the status of polar bears comes nearly a year after the Center for Biological Diversity first petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the polar bears as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

The petition was tabled Feb. 16, the same day that the Kyoto Protocol on climate change entered into force without the participation of the U.S..

Last December, the Centre for Biological Diversity, joined by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace, international conservation organizations with a combined membership of over 650,000 people, then filed a federal lawsuit to seek federal protection for the polar bears.

In its news release of this week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the “petition to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act presents substantial scientific and commercial information indicating that listing the polar bear may be warranted.”

For the next 60 days, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is inviting comments from a variety of groups about polar bears. The agency wants information about population distribution, habitat, effects of climate change on the bears and their prey, potential threats from development, contaminants and poaching.

At the conclusion of its year-long review, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will publish a decision or “12-month finding.” If the listing as a threatened species is “believed to be warranted,” the agency will publish a proposed rule to list the species.

The best-case scenario for Nunavut would be a partial listing of polar bears by population as threatened or a decision that proper management could avoid any listing.

But even this outcome might not spare Nunavut from further restrictions and bans on trophies from certain polar bear populations.

Five years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service banned all trophies from the M’Clintock Sound.

And, a year ago, not long after Nunavut decided to boost its polar bear harvest by 114 to 518, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the Canadian Wildlife Service for more information on management practices in Nunavut: it wanted to determine whether the harvest in Nunavut 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 for 2005.

Canadian researchers have reported a 17 per cent decline in polar bear numbers on the western coast of Hudson Bay from 1,200 to fewer than 1,000 over the past 10 years, but harvest quotas, approved by the Government of Nunavut for this region last year, called for an increase of nine polar bears.

Projections call for a 30 per cent decline in the overall numbers of polar bears worldwide over the next 35 to 50 years.

There are now about 25,000 polar bears across the circumpolar region.

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