Trying To Save The Polar Bears
The iconic symbol of global warming is the polar bear - that awesome creature so extraordinarily adapted to survive at the top of the world. We are all thunderstruck as we see footage of these bears skittering on thin ice or clinging precariously to a small and shrunken iceberg in a vast ocean, where they seem almost stranded at sea. They adapted to the arctic environment, but that environment is changing too fast for them.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has made a preliminary finding that polar bears should now be listed as “threatened” with extinction. Scientists report polar bears are having a harder time hunting seals because of melting ice, and they have reported drops in body weights and increased mortality.
And while global warming is the greatest threat to the polar bears, they also face peril from other human actions. It’s hard to believe, but trophy hunters are still killing polar bears in Canada. And most of the trophy hunters are Americans. They cannot kill these majestic bears in the United States where it is illegal. So they purchase hunting rights from natives in the north of Canada.
American trophy hunters are enabled by a loophole in the Marine Mammal Protection Act that allows them to import their trophies into the United States. While that act prohibits the import of parts from whales, seals, and other marine mammals, trophy-hunting advocates punched a hole in the law in 1994 to allow the imports of polar-bear trophies. Until then, such trophy imports had been banned for almost a generation.
In the last decade, more than 800 polar-bear heads and hides have been imported into the United States. The Safari Club International gives out a “Bears of the World” hunting achievement award to individuals who shoot four of the eight species of bears in the world, and that awards program drives competitive killing of polar bears in the Arctic.
Sen. Jack Reed (D.-R.I.) is a leader in the fight to close this loophole and restore the longstanding protections for polar bears. Senator Reed, a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior and Environment, successfully backed an amendment that blocks the Fish and Wildlife Service from issuing permits for American trophy hunters to import the heads and hides of polar bears.
As Reed said upon passage of his amendment, “Polar bears are rapidly becoming an endangered species. It is illegal to hunt these bears for sport in the United States. Trophy hunters shouldn’t be able to skirt the spirit of U.S. law by killing polar bears abroad and bringing their heads back across the border to America. This amendment will ensure that the United States shuts down this practice and prevents the killing of these animals for their heads.”
Here and there on the fringes of our culture, you will hear the argument that killing polar bears provides the means for conservation. But shooting polar bears to save them is Orwellian at best. This is high-priced commercial hunting, and the hefty fees may prompt over-exploitation of already vulnerable populations of bears. In 2005, hunting quotas were increased 29 percent in the native Nunavut territory despite objections of polar-bear researchers.
The bears are in trouble. They are the 21st Century’s canaries in the mineshaft. Shooting them for a living-room trophy mount in the face of their epic struggles at the razor’s edge of survival is just reckless and selfish.
If Senator Reed has his way, we might - just might - tell our children how the mighty bears of the North warned us about global warming, and to show our appreciation we spared them to live wild. If the trophy hunters won’t lay down their weapons, and Congress fails to do it for them, what will we say then?
Michael Markarian is executive vice president of the Humane Society of the United States (humanesociety.org.)
© 2007 The Providence Journal
They cannot kill these majestic bears in the United States where it is illegal. So they purchase hunting rights from natives in the north of Canada…In 2005, hunting quotas were increased 29 percent in the native Nunavut territory despite objections of polar-bear researchers.
bingo
Let us dispense with the racist BS that humans who reside in the Arctic circle are of a different species. They are human just like the rest — and that means they can be as kind or as cruel as anyone else. And should be subject to the same code of ethics. Just as the Makah tribe wanted to resume grey whale hunting as tradition (while overlooking their equally traditional human slave trading) so too should the technology and money loving Inuit be subject to the same ethical code as anyone else. When they can survive in the Arctic like the real natives — polar bears, wolves and seals, without artificial support (clothing, igloos) then maybe they can make a case for being indigenous. Regardless, they have no rights to control the destiny of other inhabitants of the planet anymore than any other human group does. It is Manifest Destiny — just in a different packaging.
Trophy hunting is only an extension of recreational hunting — where Fish and Game departments breed animals to be released and shot. Both need to be eradicated to claim we are on the road to a civilized society.
Oh man - sign me up, put me on an airplane, fly me to a plushy base camp, polish up my high-powered rifle, buy me a new scope, dress me in Gortex and Duofold, ferry me out to a well-stocked blind, and allow me to assert my primal mastery over nature by blasting a confused, starving polar bear wandering south into unknown territories because his old habitat is melting! I sure want some of that he-man action!
Let’s “surge” all the hunters and gun advocates who claim “an armed society is a safe society” to Baghdad, where they won’t have to worry about bleeding-heart liberals taking away their Constitutional right to bear armories. There they can hunt “the most dangerous animal”, but they may get to discover what a real bleeding heart is like.
wcdevins
Well said! Bravo!
Thanks, misanthrope. I love my sarcasm, but Kelmer makes some strong points I had never thought about, like the specious claim of native peoples to their traditional hunting/killing rights. I wonder why C-D articles on the environment and worker exploitation always attract such little response. Is arguing about politics that much more fun?
wcdevins:
I wonder if part of the reason that environmental posts get fewer responses is that many people don’t have a deep understanding of the connections between human well being and the preservation of biological diversity on the planet?
I’m afraid the U. S. educational system does not do a very good job of teaching science in general, and biology and ecology in particular. No doubt the heavy emphasis on testing under the No Child Left Behind act is exacerbating the problem, leaving less time for “frills” like field trips, raising animals in the classroom, etc. Endless battling over teaching evolution, the major organizing principle of modern biology, doesn’t help either.
Also, we’ve become more and more urbanized, leaving many people without direct connections to nature. Many of the field biologists and wildlife managers I know came from places like Iowa and upstate New York, many of them having been raised on farms or in small towns.
For those willing to take the time to educate themselves on the topic of biological diversity and why it matters, a really good introduction is a book called A Scientist Audits the Earth, by Stuart L. Pimm of Duke University. It’s thorough, well-documented, but also gracefully written and accessible. Also, nearly anything written by E. O. Wilson is helpful and always a good read.
Regarding worker exploitation posts, it might be interesting (although probably not possible) to track the demographics of people posting on this site. Working folks are probably out there doing just that–working. (I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t retired!)If I recall correctly from history and political science courses I took way back when, most leftist movements have been dominated by the disaffected offspring of the professional and managerial classes, not by factory workers, migrant farm workers, or hotel housekeepers.