A bear without teeth
The United States has declared the polar bear a threatened species. While this may be applauded by environmental groups on both sides of the border, the new declaration will in fact do little to improve the forecast for the animal's future.
The biggest implication of this ruling is that sport hunters from the US will no longer be allowed to come up to the Canadian North to bring down bears and bring home trophy hides. However, that doesn't mean there won't still be a hunt. Current quotas take into account subsistence hunting and sport hunting. Tags that would otherwise have gone to sport hunters will instead go to subsistence hunters. The bears will still die...but now the economy of many northern communities is threatened too.
The only way to significantly improve the fate of the polar bear, and those who are dependent on it for survival, is to try to protect its habitat: the Arctic. Unfortunately, this means trying to limit the effects of climate change, something that would be far too inconvenient and expensive for either the American or Canadian governments to consider. The upside of saving the Arctic, however, would go far beyond ensuring the survival of one species of bear. The Inuit could benefit from a little protection, too.
Comments
I heard last week that it was added to the threatened list (and NPR did a good job covering what that actually meant vs it being declared endangered) and that the main reason (according to many environmentalists who were pushing for the endangered classification) that it was it was declared threatened and not endangered was because of the climate change argument - the government doesn't want to spend the money or lose the money of the big companies that are against strict climate change policy, and having the species declared endangered would mandate protection of the habitat as well as protection of the animal itself. At least, that's what I understood the distinction to be.
However most news coverage online and even on the radio are still reporting the headline as "Polar bear added to endangered species list"and only in the fine print does it actually say "threatened" and even then few articles actually go into the distinction between the two.
Posted by: heather at May 20, 2008 12:18 PM