CITES Uplisting: Unwarranted, Unnecessary, and Unacceptable

The United States has, unfortunately, decided to propose up listing polar bears from Appendix II to Appendix I of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

As people may not be aware of what CITES is, it is an international body created to regulate trade in wildlife species with the goal of ensuring that the trade of a given species does not present a threat to the continued survival of that species.

The current Appendix II listing means that polar bears are not necessarily threatened with extinction but that trade must be controlled to avoid trade not compatible with their survival.

Up listing polar bears to Appendix I essentially states that their survival is threatened with extinction and that their trade should be permitted only in exceptional circumstances.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Where and when necessary Inuit have always been at the forefront of conservation efforts, and if we thought that the polar bear was threatened by our hunting practices we would be the first to regulate those practices. Sustainable use of any resource has been an integral part of our culture for thousands of years, and as welcome as the financial considerations of the polar bear hunt are for our people we would not turn a blind eye to the situation if the evidence indicated we were causing damage.

A good example of this is represented by the Inuit response to the decline of the Peary caribou herd. Inuit in the Inuvialuit region initiated control, and restricted their hunting of these caribou, Inuit in Resolute Bay restricted or banned hunting Peary caribou, Inuit in Grise Fiord stopped hunting Perry Caribou on most of southern Ellesmere Island.

In a further example Inuit from Holman Island engaged in a five year voluntary ban on hunting Minto Inlet caribou when they became aware that the herd was in danger.

The fact is that the polar bear is one of the most managed species on the planet, and it is nowhere near being threatened with extinction.

According to the 2008 COSEWIC Polar Bear Status Report the global world population is estimated by some at numbers between 20,000 and 25,000 animals, and that approximately 15,500 of them are either in Canada or in subpopulations shared with Canada.

According to the same report the majority of the Canadian subpopulations are projected to be "stable or increasing". A recent Polar Bear study on the Davis Strait population that covers Northern Quebec, Labrador, Nunavut and parts of Greenland showed an increase in population at an estimated total of around 2300 Polar Bears. Previous estimations of the population were much lower than this updated number.

How any reasonable person could look at those numbers and see polar bears as endangered is beyond me.

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

Any increase in current restrictions will serve only to threaten and undermine our current conservation and management strategies and are completely unwarranted and unacceptable.

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