Polar bears don't need more protection yet

Two polar bears on a
chunk of ice in the arctic.
(AP) Dan Crosbie / Canadian Ice Service

Polar bears don't need more protection yet: group

The Canadian Press

Polar bears don't need stiffer laws yet to protect their numbers, says the scientific group that advises the government on endangered species.

But the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada does say climate change is a threat to the northern bear, so it continues to be a species of special concern.

The committee assessed almost three dozen plants and animals this week at a meeting in Yellowknife.

"The primary threats to the polar bear are over-harvesting in the northeastern part of its range (and) decline of the summer sea ice in parts of the southern part of its range,'' committee chairman Jeff Hutchings said Friday.

Environment Minister John Baird must accept the group's findings if polar bears are to be formally acknowledged by the government as a species of special concern. That would oblige Ottawa to address threats to the animal's survival, including climate change.

But a management plan for Canada's roughly 15,000 bears wouldn't be required until 2014 _ a date by which some scientists believe the Arctic could be completely free of summer sea ice, the bears' favoured hunting platform.

When the committee previously listed the bears under special concern in 2002, the government asked them to re-examine the issue. No management plan was created.

In Ottawa, Baird said the government will begin consulting environmentalists, scientists and wildlife managers on how to proceed after he receives the committee's report in August.

"This government cares about the future of the polar bear and as minister of the environment, I am committed to action,'' he said.

Hutchings said evidence wasn't strong enough to recommend changing the polar bear's status to either threatened or endangered.

"There was insufficient reason to think the polar bear was at imminent risk of extinction,'' he said. "That's not to say that it's not in trouble. A special concern species is a species at risk in Canada.''

The problem, said Hutchings, is in trying to calculate how melting summer sea ice correlates with declining numbers of polar bears.

"Does a 10 per cent reduction in sea ice result in a 10 per cent reduction in polar bears? There's lots of models, lots of predictions, lots of projections, and the committee felt that there is still sufficient uncertainty...to determine how precisely polar bears might be affected by reductions in sea ice.''

Hutchings said some bear populations are in decline, but some are stable and some are actually growing.

However, Pete Ewins of the World Wildlife Fund pointed out that seven of Canada's 13 populations are either in decline or showing signs of stress such as reduced body weight.

Ewins called the committee's recommendation not to change the polar bear's status "an easy way out.''

"This is like steady-as-she-goes Canada, when in fact inactivity now will forclose all its opportunities. We'll be lucky if there aren't regional extinctions by the time the government gets around to this wonderful management plan.

"The regular man on the street knows that in places where the ice is disappearing fast, this isn't just of special concern. It is an urgent crisis.''

The Canadian discussion on the polar bear's status mirrors a similar debate in the United States, where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is deciding whether to declare the animals endangered. That decision, expected last January, has now been put off until June.

In all, the committee examined 31 species of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and plants. Fourteen species, eight of them plants, were given a more serious rating.

The ferruginous hawk, native to the Prairies, was upgraded to threatened from special concern, while two populations of the eastern foxsnake in Ontario are now considered endangered.