Coral Harbour (Jun 28/06) - An American push to label polar bears a threatened species is bad news for Nunavut's lucrative sport-hunting industry and could "kill" the economies of some Kivalliq communities, officials and hunters warned last week.

The move is being considered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which last week announced it had received more than 140,000 comments on the controversial proposal.

One of those came from the Government of Nunavut, which called on the American agency to maintain the status quo. If polar bears are added to the threatened list, it would become illegal to import their hides into the United States.

"This would harm many people in Nunavut who depend on American sport hunters for valuable income," Environment Minister Patterk Netser said in the assembly June 12.

While precise numbers are not available, there were about seven American sport hunts in the Kivalliq last winter. Most were in Coral Harbour, which, along with Resolute, is one of the busiest polar bear-hunting centres in Nunavut.

Each hunt contributes between $35,000 and $45,000 to the local economy, Ben Ell, a part owner with E&E Outfitting in the small island community said.

American tourists spend thousands of dollars on guides, dog teams, hotels and even home-made caribou skin clothes, he said last week.

"(A ban) would kill the economy in Coral Harbour and Nunavut for that matter."

The push to add polar bears to the threatened list comes from an environmental group based in California, the Centre for Biodiversity. With temperatures in the Arctic on the rise and sea-ice receding perhaps faster than ever, the group claims the polar bears face the prospect of extinction within the next century.

The centre hopes a favourable ruling will force the White House to reduce the driving force behind global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, according to its website.

Nunavut hunters and government officials, though, believe the polar bear population is healthy.

"There are a lot of them around here. Some bears are even coming into town," Ell said. "You can walk outside of the community and see them (almost) every day."

A head count last year revealed there were 15,250 bears in Nunavut and 11 of the 13 populations were stable, Jane Cooper, the assistant deputy minister of the environment, said.

The government handed out 76 tags last winter.

Cooper said the struggling populations - one of which is one, the Western shore of Hudson Bay - could be affected by climate change, but there was no "empirical evidence" to confirm that.

The American environmental groups "did not have all their facts on the table" Cooper said.

In the assembly, Netser took aim at those same organizations.

"In the south, people are not familiar with polar bears and too many have the simple and incorrect view that all... populations are changing due to climate change."

The Coral Harbour economy, like that in many other Nunavut communities, has become reliant on the sport-hunt, with about 20 guides in the hamlet.

While the polar bear season starts in October, residents wait until November before heading out, giving southern hunters a better chance of bagging an animal, Ell said.

American hunters who harvest animals in the Coral Harbour area are not allowed to import their animals into the United States, because the American government considers the local population endangered. So Americans leave their animals with the local taxidermist, waiting for the population to recover enough for regulations to change. But a full-scale ban on polar bear hides would probably keep Americans away altogether, Ell said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has committed to making a decision by December.