Today the US Government listed the Polar Bear as a Threatened Species. For the most part I’m just going to point you to what I said back here. I guess this now means that in order to remove the threat the US will finally take action against Climate Change. Won’t it?
Nothing has changed, the same number of bears will be taken in Canada from currently sustainable populations. What is different is that there will no longer be sport hunters coming to Arctic Bay to hunt bear (there weren’t any sport hunters in Arctic Bay this spring either for entirely different reasons, but if I start blogging about that local issue I’ll end up giving myself an aneurysm and will quickly look like the mascot on Townie Bastard’s blog). Locally, here in Arctic Bay, it will mean the loss of about a half a million dollars in revenue. Much needed money given the state of our local economy. And like I said, regardless of the decision the same numbers of bears will be taken, just more of them will be by local hunters.
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I am a US citizen. And I have no hope that the US government will do the right thing.
To many people, placement on the endangered list means that they have done the right thing. But just like the ridiculous notion that repealing our gas taxes for the summer will actually save anyone money, not many take time to think the issue all the way through.
Thanks for the comment Karen. I never thought that I’d be disappointed to see an animal listed as threatened. The sad thing is that only the perception of protection is being done, carbon is still being pumped into the air. It (the listing) actually deflects attention from the problem as people think the threat is being addressed.
I wonder if there is any future for a ‘photo hunt’ business starting up to replace the present version? Certainly there are people with money who will travel to the ends of the earth to take photos of wildlife. Perhaps that would work in Nunavut…
Part of the problem with attracting tourism up here Michael is our expensive travel which makes it very difficult to compete. Want to photograph Polar Bears? Why here instead of the much cheaper and easier Churchill. Want to experience the Baffin? Why here instead of the cheaper Cape Dorset, Pang or even Pond Inlet?
There is no doubt that we have underexploited our tourism potential here, including the photo safaris, but even if we do a better job the Sport Hunters are going to be a hard bunch to lose.
They are a pretty singular bunch, willing to spend a great deal of money to go on their hunt. Our current number of hunters is twelve (the number is set by the community, out of our twenty-five tags). Each one of them spends between $30,000 and $35,000 on the hunt alone. Just the hunt, that doesn’t include their airfare, licence, trophy fees, accommodation and meals when they aren’t on the land, tips etc. The local outfitter sees about $25,000 of that money from the hunt, plus the tips etc. The hotel or us has them for at least two nights (coming and going) but usually at least three and sometimes over a week. In all those twelve men and women bring almost .5 million to this community.