Polar bear not threatened, Canadian panel finds

Polar bear not threatened, Canadian panel finds

Randall Palmer, Reuters
Published: Friday, April 25, 2008; OTTAWA

The polar bear is in trouble in Canada because of overhunting and global warming, but it is not endangered or threatened with extinction, an independent committee advising the Canadian government said Friday. The committee gave the fabled Arctic animals the weakest classification, that of "special concern," but the Canadian government would nonetheless have to develop a management plan to protect them if it agrees with the new label.

Based on the best available information at hand, there was insufficient reason to think that the polar bear was at imminent risk of extinction said Jeffrey Hutchings, chairman of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.


"That's not to say that it's not in trouble. A special-concern species is a species at risk in Canada and requires legislative action should the government decide to include this species on the legal list."

Canada has an estimated 15,500 polar bears, roughly two-thirds of the global population. Disappearing summer sea ice is causing a decline in numbers in some areas but other regions are stable and in some the population is rising.

Hutchings said that in addition to global warming and too much hunting, oil and gas activity was also hurting the population.

Federal Environment Minister John Baird has three months to decide on a response. But he said in a statement: "Our government believes that the polar bear is an iconic symbol of Canada. As such, we also believe we have a responsibility to ensure its population is strong and its future is certain." The stronger "threatened" status, if adopted, would have required prohibitions like bans on hunting and destruction of habitat, but Canada's Arctic Inuit people say hunting should continue.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed listing the polar bear as a threatened species but has declined so far to formally do so. Hutchings said he understood it has postponed its decision till the end of June.

The U.S. Geological Survey said last September that two-thirds of the world's polar bears could be gone by mid-century if predictions of melting sea ice hold true.

The Canadian environmental group David Suzuki Foundation said five of Canada's 13 polar bear populations were thought to be in decline. The western Hudson Bay population declined by 22% between 1987 and 2004, it said.

The group called for tougher action to combat global warming in addition to a formal listing under the Species at Risk Act.

Citing dramatic declines in sea ice due to global warming, the United States yesterday declared the polar bear a "threatened" species under the Endangered Species Act.

The decision was immediately condemned by the territorial government of Nunavut as "based on misinformed public opinion which disregarded sound science and Inuit traditional knowledge."

The announcement by the U. S. Department of Interior came within hours of a court-ordered deadline to make a decision.

Environmental groups had sought that order through a lawsuit they brought after the Department missed its own deadline in January.

"Although the population of bears has grown from a low of about 12,000 in the late 1960s to approximately 25,000 today, our scientists advise me that computer modelling projects a significant population decline by the year 2050," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne told a news conference yesterday. "This, in my judgment, makes the polar bear a threatened species -- one likely to become in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future."

Before announcing the decision, Mr. Kempthorne met last week with Canada's Environment Minister John Baird and Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit orgnanization, and pledged to work together "to ensure that this majestic creature thrives now and in the future."

Nunavut Premier Paul Okalik said yesterday the unintended consequences of the U. S. decision will be "economic hardship in traditional Inuit communities" due to reduced revenue from guiding and outfitting hunting parties. But he said the current quota system for the sport hunt will not be affected, because it was not based on market demand to begin with, but on "a combination of scientific information and Inuit traditional knowledge."

He said his government would have to review the ruling before deciding on a response.

With photogenic cubs that belie the ferocity of their parents, the polar bear --an "apex predator" in scientific terminology -- is a potent icon in the fight against climate change, and it figured prominently in Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Yesterday's decision adds to the media arsenal of climate activists, but Mr. Kempthorne stressed that this designation should not be used as a proxy law to address climate change.

"Listing the polar bear as threatened can reduce avoidable losses of polar bears," Mr. Kempthorne said. "But it should not open the door to use the [Endangered Species Act] to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants and other sources. That would be a wholly inappropriate use of the Endangered Species Act. ESA is not the right tool to set U. S. climate policy."

That clarification drew scorn from environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, whose director Carl Pope said the decision is "riddled with loopholes, caveats and backhanded language that could actually undermine protections for the polar bear and other species."

In Canada, the polar bear has no status under the Species at Risk Act. Last month, however, a federal advisory panel designated the polar bear a species of special concern, a less dire rating than "at risk," largely because threats to its welfare vary widely over its range.

Four of 13 Canadian subpopulations are at a high risk of declining by 30% or more over the next three bear generations (36 years), partly due to climate change "but mostly due to unsustainable harvest in Kane Basin and Baffin Bay," the panel reported. The other seven subpopulations, representing nearly half of Canada's 15,500 polar bears, "are projected to be stable or increasing."

The global population of polar bears is estimated at around 25,000, with the others distributed over Alaska, Greenland and Russia.

A key difference between the Canadian and U.S. designations is that the Canadian projections do not account for the possible effects of climate change, whereas the U. S. one is based partly on computer-model projections of sea-ice reductions. As such, it is the first time the Endangered Species Act has been used to protect an animal against threats from climate change.

"My hope is the projections from these models are wrong, and that sea ice does not further recede. But the best science available to me currently says that is not likely to happen in the next 45 years," Mr. Kempthorne said.

jbrean@nationalpost.com