A big loss for polar bears -- with a small silver lining
Posted March 18, 2010 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
_3.jpg "Polar bear (Tim Knepp, USFWS)")
You may have heard the news, but early this morning we got word that the nations meeting at the Convention on International Trade Endangered Species (CITES) rejected an United States proposal, supported and encouraged by NRDC, that would have ended the international commercial trade in polar bears and strengthened the regulation of polar bear sports hunting.
My colleague Zak Smith is in Doha, Qatar, and has been blogging about our fight for polar bears (you can read his posts here, here, and here).
There’s no doubt about it, the vote was a big loss. Canada alone takes about 300 polar bears for international trade and sports hunting each year—this is an unsustainable and unnecessary stress on the population. And the Canadian populations are particularly important to the fate of the bear. At the end of the day, our loss was the result of the failure of the European Union to vote to protect polar bears. It’s a particularly frustrating outcome, given that both the European Parliament and the European Commission had formally supported increased protections.
But I comfort myself that some good did come out of the process. As the result of the U.S. proposal, Canada significantly cut back on its polar bear quotas, in a (successful, as it turns out) attempt to head off further CITES restrictions. In the Baffin Bay, for example, Canada recently announced that it was going to cut it total quota from 105 bears to 65 bears over the next four years. Over the phase-in period alone, that’s 100 bears that won’t be shot thanks to our efforts. A lot of the credit goes to NRDC’s members and activists who have been incredibly active in making their voice heard to both the Canadian and the U.S. governments.
In the coming days our polar bear team will regroup and figure out the best way to continue the fight. There are still measures that the CITES convention can take to reduce polar bear trade and there are other international agreements and strategies we will be taking a close look at. Stay tuned…this fight is far from over.
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Comments
Douglas George — Mar 18 2010 02:51 PM
Very sorry to hear, Andrew. This sounds like a lot of hard work with all-too-slim results. Has to be very depressing. It's a just good thing there are people like you still willing to keep up the fight. (Shame, Canada. Guess it turns out that if Palin gets elected, we can no longer move there, where's next?)
randy johnson — Mar 19 2010 05:48 PM
Sweet! Can't wait to book my Polar Bear hunt! Do you know that there are more polar bear now than anytime in history? Yeah and you guys think hunting is so wrong. Do you know that hunting polar bears provides the necessary funding to carry out the research that is needed? If there were no hunting where do you think the funding will come from? Bake sales? Animals are renewable resources just like trees. People first!
Andrew Wetzler — Mar 20 2010 11:26 AM
Randy, two quick points in response.
First, NRDC is not anti-hunting. In fact, we have hunters on staff (don't believe me? Check this out: http://tiny.cc/EQoEx). What we don't support is unsustainable hunting, especially of endangered species.
Second, you’re right, polar bear numbers have risen from a low of about 6,000 animals in the late 60’s--but they only got that low because they were being overhunted in the first place. Now bear populations all over the world are declining again, this time mostly because of global warming, but also because some countries (Canada, in particular) are still hunting bears at an unsustainable level. If polar bears are going to have a shot at surviving climate change, hunting levels have to be brought down.
Elizabeth Unser — Mar 25 2010 06:34 PM
I'm so sorry to hear the polar bears lost the fight against commercial trade from Canada. This is a huge loss for humanity and the lives of our polar bears desperately trying to hang on in a global climate.