Inuit Disappointed at US Activism on CITES Polar Bear Up-Listing Proposal

 Friday October 16, 2009 – Ottawa, Ontario - Mary Simon, President of Canada’s national Inuit organization, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, expressed profound disappointment regarding the U.S. government’s decision to propose a Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) transfer of Polar Bear from Appendix II to Appendix I for the March 2010 CITES Conference of the Parties in Doha, Qatar.

 

An Appendix I listing on CITES would effectively designate the Polar Bear as threatened with extinction and prompt international trade restrictions on the species. Inuit organizations in Canada have communicated their disagreement with such a proposal through Environment Canada, who in turn has forwarded Canada’s position against the proposal to counterparts in the U.S.

 

“I don’t understand, and many Inuit don’t understand to this day why the US is so intent on actively pursuing the implementation of highly restrictive protections on Polar Bear at the expense of Inuit, despite the fact that the species is one of the most managed species in world and is nowhere near being threatened with extinction,” said President Simon. “This is direct attack on our rights, culture, hunting practices, conservation and management agreements, and local economies as an Indigenous peoples of the Arctic.”

 

In May 2008, the U.S. government made a decision to list the Polar Bear as Threatened under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA), which effectively banned imports through the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) of Polar Bear hides and products brought in by American hunters from Inuit guided hunts in Canada. The decision severely undermined an important activity that benefitted the local economies of small Inuit communities in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

 

“The 1972 MMPA, the U.S. ESA decision of last year, and now this current activist move by the U.S. on their CITES proposal is demonstrating to Inuit in Canada that the U.S. sees our interests, rights, and way of life as expendable,” said Ms. Simon. “This ratcheting-up of restrictions will only serve to threaten and undermine our current conservation and management regimes and agreements that are already in place, and we do not want to be further restricted beyond the quota systems that we have been participating in now for a number of decades.

 

 

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