News of the North

The Interior Department of the United States government has until May 15 to decide whether or not the polar bear should be considered a threatened species. The decision was originally due on January 9, 2008 based on a petition that began in 2005. While the Fish and Wildlife Service has been stalling, the Bush administration has been busy planning oil and gas leases on the Chukchi Sea, which is a known polar bear habitat.

There’s no guarantee that the polar bears will in fact be given their “threatened” designation, but environmental groups are prepared to appeal if the government denies the bears are in danger. In the meantime, hunters are scrambling to take the bears down while it’s still legal:

“It’s a super adrenalin rush. It’s incredible,” said Mark Beeler, a 49-year-old bow hunter from Milwaukee, Wis. “A polar bear is almost mysterious. Before this, I’d only ever seen a polar bear at the zoo.”

Let’s hear it for the educational value of zoos!

Whatever the decision may be in the States, Canada has to make its own decision on the status of polar bears. Canada has just labelled the bear a “special concern” - less serious than threatened or endangered -but stated that this is without taking global warming into consideration, a move called “weak” by the Center for Biological Diversity.

Follow along at the CBD’s web site.

The World Wildlife Fund is calling for a moratorium on polar bear hunting in the Baffin Bay area, due to the existing threats to the bear’s existence. The Nunavut government also believes that the hunt is not sustainable, based on “both Inuit knowledge and scientific work".

Northern hunters and trappers claim that the research is based on old data. If that’s the case, shouldn’t that mean there are even fewer bears than projected?

Learn more about polar bears and the WWF’s conservation efforts here. For more details on polar bear population data, you can read the reports to the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board.