Super Eco

Photo credit: mape_s

The declining health and well-being of polar bear populations are one of the starkest and most visible effects of climate change. It's quite simple: the areas where polar bears live are getting warmer and they have nowhere else to go. Canadian scientists want to increase protection of these populations in their arctic regions, and one would think that they wouldn't face much opposition. After all, who doesn't love polar bears? Ah, but there are two sides to almost every story and this one is no different.

The local Inuit population is the other side in this case, and many of them rely on polar bears as a source of income, often serving as guides to recreational hunters. Should a ban be placed on this practice, thus helping the polar bears but potentially putting members of the local Inuit community out of business? This was the debate at Winnipeg's recent "Polar Bear Roundtable," which is also, incidentally, the name of my new band. The consortium is only a preliminary part of Canada's review process, which won't reclassify the bears until at least 2010. Though Canada considers the species a "special concern," they are not yet listed among Canada's threatened species, even though the United States has given them that designation (perhaps easier to do considering the low non-Alaskan U.S. polar bear population).

So, what are the numbers? The arctic areas of Canada, particularly the area that borders Greenland, are home to about 8,000 of the roughly 25,000 polar bears left in the world. The Inuit people share another common bond with the polar bears, as they are also not listed as a threatened group, despite there being only about 50,000 remaining in northern Canada—a large chunk of their population disappeared over the last centuries due to diseases like tuberculosis. What's the conservation position in these circumstances? State your own case in the comments.