Stephanie Macdonald
Northern News Services
Monday, July 2, 2007

IQALUIT - The U.S. House of Representatives rejected an amendment June 27 to the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which would have prohibited American sports hunters from importing polar bear hides and heads that had been killed in the Canadian North.

The proposed ban was rejected by a vote of 242-188, according to The Oklahoman.

The amendment would have stopped the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from granting permits to sports hunters to import polar bear parts.

The proposal states that polar bears are under stress from climate change and habitat degradation. In Alaska, only members of the native population may harvest polar bears.

Though the House of Representatives has rejected the motion, the amendment will still go before the U.S. Senate later this year.

"Obviously it would affect the income of our communities, especially the smaller communities who depend on sports hunters coming in," said Environment Minister Patterk Nester from his home in Coral Harbour last week.

Nester reports receiving a call from a member of the U.S. Congress with questions on how polar bear tags are allocated.

Nester said that there is a lot of misinformation on the polar bear hunt and his department has been attempting to educate American government officials on the issue.

Nunavut is home to 12 of Canada's 13 polar bear populations, totalling an estimated 14,780.

There are 19 populations in the world. Of the 12 populations in Nunavut, American sports hunters can only import their kill from five of these populations, located primarily along western Hudson Bay and northwest Nunavut.

Since 1995, about 500 polar bears have been harvested annually, with an estimated 98 taken by sports hunters, according to the Nunavut Department of Environment.

For a 10-day hunt, sports hunters, 69 per cent of whom came from the U.S. between 2000 and 2005, are willing to pay upwards of $35,000. The department of Environment estimates that $19,000 of that stays in the community.

If the amendment banning importing of polar bear parts become law in the U.S., the Nunavut economy stands to lose an estimated $591,280 annually.

"It's all emotional driven, largely by anti-hunting interests and global warming concerns," said Jerome Knap, president of Canada North Outfitting.

Knap runs the first outfitting company to have organized polar bear hunts in Nunavut, starting in 1980.

The irony, Knap said, is that the number of polar bears harvested would not change.

The department of Environment sets each community's quota for polar bears, based on traditional knowledge and scientific information from the corresponding population. The Hunters and Trappers Organizations in each community then decides how many tags to designate for sports hunts.

If the amendment is passed by the Senate, it would be difficult to replace the American hunters with Europeans, Knap said. He suspects that there would be a bigger supply of hunts than demand, for at least a few years.

Inuit can hunt with snowmobiles, giving them a virtual 100 per cent success rate. Sports hunters, on the other hand, must go by dogsled, and only have a success rate of 70 per cent at times, Knap said.

"The sports hunts in fact decrease the overall kill rate of polar bears in Nunavut and northern NWT."

Not so, according to Michael Markarian, executive vice president for external affairs with the Humane Society of the United States, an organization who advocated for the ban.

"We don't believe that you can save polar bears by shooting them. We will save these animals by protecting their habitat," he said.