Polar bear politics

The defeat of an American proposal to ban the international trade of polar bear products was met with relief by Canada's Inuit, who say threats to the iconic northern animal have been overblown.

The U.S. proposal was rejected at a meeting in Qatar in mid-March of the 175 countries signed to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The U.S. was trying to have polar bears transferred from Appendix II of the convention, which lists species not yet threatened with extinction, to Appendix I, reserved for the most endangered.

That reclassification would have banned Canadian exports of products like rugs and effectively put an end to commercial polar bear hunting.

Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said in a statement that the proposal was "unwarranted and unacceptable."                                                                                                                                                                A mating pair of polar bears in the Beaufort Sea, NWT.

"This is yet another example of government bowing to pressure from animal rights and environmental lobbyists with their own selfish and narrow agendas," the statement read. "It is an attack on our rights, culture, hunting practices, conservation and management agreements, and our local economies as an indigenous peoples of the Arctic."

There are between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears worldwide and about 60 per cent are in Canada. Nunavut's wildlife management system puts the total allowable harvest per year at 3.5 per cent of the population or between 430 and 530 bears. Tags are given to communities to be divvied up between commercial and subsistence hunts. 

Canada is the only country that allows commercial hunts, which must be led by Inuit guides. They were popular with American hunters until the U.S. banned the import of polar bear products into their country in 2008.

Simon Awa, Deputy Minister of Environment for Nunavut, says the loss of American hunting clientele has been "devastating" for Inuit communities who depended on the hunt for income.

"Especially for the hunters who don't know any other ways of earning income because they have been brought up as a hunter," Awa says.

Livelihoods in peril

Ryan St. John learned how to hunt polar bears from his uncle. He shot his first one at 17. Now he and his wife run Henik Lake Adventures in Arviat, Nunavut, offering guided hunts. 

Polar bear hunts once injected about $300,000 into the community, St. John says. The people who worked the hunts - guides, cooks, supply runners – all made enough money during the hunting season to sustain themselves for the rest of the year.

He says that all but dried up when the American import ban was implemented.  I think this was probably seen as a clever move… to deflect the issue: 'If we get people to focus on the issue of harvest, then we don't have to address the issue of climate change.

"The people that were involved, now they don't have the money for snowmobiles, ATVs, guns – the things they need to support their subsistence lifestyle," he says. 

Andrew Derocher, a researcher from the University of Alberta who studies the movement patterns and distribution of polar bears in Canada's north, says hunting and international trade of the animals "is not a threat in any way, shape or form."

Climate change, he says, is the real threat to the marine mammals.

"It was a bit of a red herring," says Derocher. "I think this was probably seen as a clever move… to deflect the issue: 'If we get people to focus on the issue of harvest, then we don't have to address the issue of climate change.'" 

In its proposal, the U.S. acknowledged that habitat loss due to climate change is the main threat to polar bears but expressed concern that hunting would compound those effects.

What's in a name?

A motivating factor behind both the CITES proposal and the import ban is the U.S. categorization of polar bears as "threatened" under their Endangered Species Program. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada lists polar bears as of "special concern," meaning they may become threatened or endangered.

While he disagreed with the trade-ban proposal, Derocher says when it comes to their seemingly more serious classification, “the Americans got it right.”  

Andrew Derocher measures the skull length of an adult polar bear to monitor growth patterns in the Beaufort Sea, NWT.

“The reason we've got a difference is because Canada dropped the ball," Derocher says.

Dr. Jeff Hutchings, chair of COSEWIC, says differences between the two assessment systems make a comparison misleading. Canada, for instance, has three categories for species at risk - special concern, threatened and endangered – while the U.S. recognizes only the latter two.

"People get caught up in labels," Hutching says. "At the end of the day, people are better served to expend their energies doing what they can to protect polar bears."

St. John says polar bears don’t need protection from hunters. Nunavut's wildlife management system is one of the best in the world, he says, and ensures that hunting is sustainable. 

He says he has seen the effects of climate change on polar bears. They have moved further north as the south warms, causing sea ice – polar bears' hunting ground – to melt earlier and freeze later.

But he doesn't think polar bears are in any immediate danger.

"Animals are resilient. They're not going to roll over and die because it's warm further south and they can't get to their food source," St. John says. 

Awa agrees.

"I always try to emphasize that as long as the earth's axis remains about the same, the Arctic will always have a winter," he says. "And the polar bears will adapt."

Tracking the polar bear