Kent Driscoll
Northern News Services
Monday, April 23, 2007

IQALUIT - Politics, not science, is the theme of Nunavut's department of Environment's opposition to the proposed American listing of polar bears as a threatened species.

Submitted on April 6, the argument joins 500,000 pieces of correspondence received by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department on the proposed polar bear listing.

"Polar bears have become a political tool for environmental groups trying to force a change in U.S. climate change policy," said Environment Minister Patterk Nester.

Listing polar bears as threatened could be devastating to Nunavut's sport hunt economy, but a U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman said that American hunters may still be able to take home their trophy, even if the species is labelled threatened.

This may be the way out for the $1.5 million a year sport hunt industry.

"We have not determined that either," said Larry Bell, assistant regional director for external affairs for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service on if a threatened listing means no imports.

"There are some differences between the Marine Mammal Act and the Endangered Species Act. We are getting a legal review."

Nunavut's submission to the Americans says that politics and poor science have been applied to the polar bear issue.

"We suggest that the proposed listing is more about the politics of climate change than it is about polar bears," appears in the first paragraph of the submission.

The document outlines which scientists are playing politics, and how they are going about it.

The Centre for Biological Diversity (CBD) is identified as the proponents of the listing, and the document calls their motivation into question, and lumps them in with a familiar enemy, Greenpeace.

"Their interest in the plight of the polar bear did not emerge until the World Wildlife Fund made polar bears a poster species for fighting greenhouse gas emissions... They were joined by Greenpeace in their submission," reads the document. Nunavut Environment officials also accuse CBD of putting words in the mouth of an Inuit icon.

"Ms. Sheila Watt-Cloutier was identified as a reviewer. She is listed as a reviewer, but she did not review the proposed rule," reads the document.

With 500,000 notes, e-mails, letters and proposals on the polar bear listing, Fish and Wildlife officials have their work cut out for them.

They are going to be sifting through messages for months.

"We are beginning to break them down into categories," said Bell. "It is not a popularity contest, we are really interested in the science. "

The Nunavut Wildlife Management Board will hold a hearing April 24-25 in Arviat on proposed options to lower the harvest quota on Western Hudson Bay polar bears, a population which the Canadian Wildlife Service has reported to be in decline.