Tag Archives: CITES

Photographer’s claims that Inuit hunting is unsustainable are not supported

A campaign by an anti-hunting Norwegian photographer to destroy the market for legally-hunted polar bears in Canada makes a few disturbingly false claims and an article at National Geographic in which he is quoted further distorts the picture of polar bear conservation. I understand that some people object to hunting and wish more people felt like they do – but this sort of argument is unlikely to sway any but the most gullible.

Cover photo Ole J Liodden small web

Norwegian photographer Ole Liodden apparently has a master’s degree in “nature management and environmental policy“. He takes fabulous polar bear pictures (I purchased one of them, above, for the cover of my novel, EATEN) but his crusade to ban hunting and trade in polar bear products world-wide has lead him to misrepresent essential facts, which is no way to win an argument. A National Geographic writer and several polar bear specialists have provided additional spin and used it as an excuse to promote their failed prophesies that polar bears are doomed: “Should polar bear hunting be legal? It’s complicated” (28 May 2019).

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US finally abandons unscientific bid to ban international polar bear trade

“The fight is over, for the time being. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided not to pursue an international ban on trade in polar bear products that the CITES COP17 gathering in South Africa this September.”

CITES 2017 US drops bid to ban polar bear trade_2 May 2016

From a news report at NunatsiaqOnline this morning (2 May 2016) – the only news outlet so far that has carried the news (U.S. drops bid to ban international trade in polar bear products).

You may or may not agree with the practice of sport hunting for polar bears but this move is huge.  For years, the US has been trying to bully the international community  into accepting their warped perception of Arctic species conservation (where what computer models say  might happen by 2050 trumps what is true today). Polar bear numbers have not declined due to global warming or over-hunting, and face no immediate threat of extinction.

Here is the only “announcement” made by US Fish & Wildlife, which came buried at the end of a lengthy blog post (dated 27 April 2016), which seems to indicate they have not really changed their minds but may not want to lose face by loosing again:

Regarding polar bears, though we remain concerned about the commercial use of polar bear hides as an additional threat to the species, we are not pursuing increased CITES protections at this time. We are putting our resources into working in collaboration with other polar bear range states to address climate change and mitigate its impacts on the polar bear as the overwhelming threat to the long-term future of the species.” [my bold]

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Polar bears will not be considered for severe CITES trade restrictions

The CITES working group meeting that just concluded in Tel Aviv, Israel a few days ago decided it would not recommend a vote to move polar bears from Appendix II, where they are now, to Appendix I, at the next general CITES meeting in 2016.

CITES 2015 meeting logo

It appears, however, that the US – which was behind failed petitions in the past (in 2010 and 2013) and voiced an official objection to this 2015 decision – is threatening to raise the issue again at the next all-nations meeting of CITES in September 2016 (probably with a petition at that meeting).

The USA is trying to bully Canada and the international community to adopt its own shaky interpretation of what constitutes good polar bear science and it looks like it may refuse to give up until it has won.

UPDATE: 7 September 2015,  CITES press release (pdf here, relevant passage marked by me):

“The Committee’s Review of Significant Trade concluded that the current level of trade in polar bears, amongst others, is not detrimental to the survival of the species in the wild.
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Polar bear conservation: the next 10 years

As 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of an international agreement to protect polar bears from commercial and unregulated sport hunting, many eyes are looking to the immediate future. What should polar bear conservation look like over the next 10 years?

Do we base conservation measures over the next 10 years on the grim computer-generated scenarios predicted to occur decades from now or on the positive news from recent polar bear studies?

Should we base conservation measures over the next 10 years on the grim computer-generated scenarios predicted to occur decades from now or on the positive news coming from recent polar bear studies?

This week (December 3-6), the five Arctic nations that signed the original agreement are meeting in Moscow to examine this issue and renew the vows they took back in 1973 — but with a decidedly new focus (International Forum on Conservation of Polar Bears).

According to the draft agenda, the delegates will address among other things the perceived threats of future sea ice declines due to climate change and trade in polar bear trophies.

However, polar bears are currently doing well despite recent declines in summer sea ice, and CITES rejected a US-led proposal to ban polar bear trade at their meeting last March – as they did in 2010 – because it was deemed unwarranted.

At this time, polar bear numbers have not declined due to climate change: their “threatened” status in some countries is based on computer-modeled predictions of what might happen three or more decades from now, not ten years ahead.

In fact, polar bears are a conservation success story. Their numbers have rebounded remarkably since 1973: there are many more polar bears now than there were 40 years ago. While polar bear numbers appear to have been stable since 2001 (at 20,000-25,000 bears), this is based on creative accounting by the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG). Numbers have actually increased by about 2,600 to 5,700 bears since 2001.

The last assessment made by the PBSG in 2009 showed only one polar bear population (Western Hudson Bay) had a statistically significant decline in recent years. Numbers of Western Hudson Bay bears declined 22% between 1998 and 2004, which has been blamed on declining sea ice cover over the last 20 years.

[While a new population estimate, showing a further decline in Western Hudson Bay bears, was released to The Guardian (UK) newspaper last week, that estimate comes from a report that has not yet been made public by Environment Canada. Details of the study are unknown.]

Compare this situation to the adjacent population that lives in Southern Hudson Bay. Polar bears in Southern Hudson Bay have experienced the same increase in length of ice-free season as bears in Western Hudson Bay, but the Southern Hudson Bay population has remained stable over the last 30 years.

Why would a slight lengthening of the ice-free season devastate Western Hudson Bay bears but leave Southern Hudson Bay bear numbers unaffected? Perhaps, it’s because the population in the west has been returning to a smaller, sustainable level after rapid population growth in the 1980s: bears had been heavily over-hunted in Western Hudson Bay before the 1973 protection treaty was enacted.

Aside from the documented declines in Western Hudson Bay, a few other populations were assumed by the PBSG in 2009 to be declining. However, these assessments were based on computer projections over 10 years rather than an actual decline in numbers. Since then, there has not been an official PBSG update of the global population estimate.

We do know that in many regions of the Arctic, polar bears are doing just fine. For example, a recent study shows that bears in the Chukchi Sea are in excellent condition and reproducing very well, despite a dramatic decline in summer sea ice. Contrary to what the computer models predicted, Chukchi bears (shared between the US and Russia) are doing better than virtually all other polar bear populations.

In the Chukchi Sea, ringed seals – the primary prey of polar bears everywhere, now listed as “threatened” in the USA – are also doing better now than they were 20 years ago. As a consequence, bears had more food the next spring, not less, despite the marked decline of summer sea ice.

In fact, polar bear populations in a number of regions have not responded as predicted to recent summer sea ice losses, calling into question the accuracy of models that predicted a decline of 2/3 of the world’s polar bears by mid-century.

This is not really surprising, since we know that over geological time, polar bears have survived extended periods of much less ice than today. A recent genetic study indicated that polar bears survived the Eemian interglacial (130,000 to 115,000 years ago) with a relatively large population, despite much less ice than today. Computer models, on the other hand, predicted almost total extinction of polar bears under similar conditions.

Why this disconnect between predictions and reality? It turns out that summer ice melt (the level recorded in September, announced with much fanfare every year) has impacted polar bears much less than expected. That’s because spring is the prime feeding period for the big white bears, and spring ice coverage (March to June) has changed little over the last 30 years.

In other words, the focus on declines in summer sea ice as a major threat to polar bear survival is a red herring.

Polar bears were indeed threatened with extinction by the early 1970s and Arctic nations were quite correct to sign a treaty to protect them from unregulated hunting. But today, polar bears have a large population that is well distributed throughout their available territory, a recognized characteristic of a healthy species.

Polar bears were brought back from the brink of extinction and are now thriving. Instead of rejoicing over the success of 40 years of good conservation practices and planning to do more of the same, the focus of this week’s meeting of Arctic nations appears to be speculating what awful things might happen decades from now.

Everyone wants to see polar bears continue to thrive. In my opinion, what we need over the next 10 years is dispassionate scientific information — something that has been sorely lacking over the last decade. More polar bear research is absolutely a requirement but we need the results presented without emotional appeals for a particular agenda. Objective scientific information will most effectively guide rational polar bear conservation and sound management practices.

What we don’t need is a computer-manufactured crisis to replace a problem that’s already been solved — or a ban on trade of a healthy species, unless there is very strong evidence of organized poaching and illegal trade.

Ultimately, what will the meeting in Moscow accomplish? It appears that any agreement signed by government representatives will not be a legally binding contract, in contrast to the 1973 treaty. Over the next few days, the press releases and news reports will tell us what the parties involved think they achieved.

Cannibalism update and insight on the timing of media hype

In my last post, I went over some of the spin and misrepresentation of fact contained in the claim by leading polar bear biologists Steven Amstrup, Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher (Amstrup et al. 2006; Stirling and Derocher 2012) that cannibalism is on the increase because of the effects of global warming on Arctic sea ice.

I’ve had an opportunity to follow up on three points that puzzled me. Three relate to the Amstrup et al. paper that described three cases of cannibalism in the southeastern Beaufort Sea in 2004 and one to the incidents in western Hudson Bay in 2009. In the process, I found at least three more misrepresentations of fact and gained some insight on why these incidents of cannibalism were hyped so enthusiastically when they were. Continue reading

Matt Ridley’s foreword to my “10 good reasons not to worry” list – “We should be listening to Susan Crockford”

Benny Peiser over at the Global Warming Policy Foundation has just posted an essay by well-known author Matt Ridley (including “The Rational Optimist”), entitled “We should be listening to Susan Crockford” which is included as a foreword to a pdf of my earlier post, “Ten good reasons not to worry about polar bears.”

This stand-alone pdf is especially suitable for sharing with friends and policy makers.

I encourage you to have a look.

Polar bear spin reaches epic proportions at Bangkok CITES meeting

As I mentioned here in an update to my March 7th post, Damian Carrington at the Guardian Environment blog had this telling quote about the CITES deliberations that took place prior to the vote to ban polar bear trade (by uplisting its status from Appendix II to Appendix I):

As the debate raged, national delegates from other countries got confused by the strident but conflicting claims. “Where is the truth? Is it true that the polar bear is declining. Is it true that trade is increasing? We need to know,” said the Egyptian delegate.[my bold]

Indeed. Was there “truth” in the presentations heard by delegates? By that I mean, honest presentations of facts so that delegates could make up their own minds, or facts loaded with spin to sway the decision one way or another? I wasn’t there so I can’t say. But we can get some impression of what might have been said from two press releases statements issued after the vote failed by two parties that were actively promoting acceptance of the US-led proposal.[Update: Humane Society Press Release is here] Continue reading

US proposal to ban polar bear trade FAILS

Just in, the BBC reports (Matt McGrath): [UPDATE FOLLOWS]

A proposal by the US to ban cross-border trade in polar bears and their parts was defeated on Thursday at an international meeting.

The result marks a victory for Canada’s indigenous Inuit people over their bigger neighbour to the south.

Delegates at the Cites meeting in Thailand rejected the proposal to change the bear’s status from a species whose trade is regulated, not banned.

A similar proposal was defeated three years ago at the last Cites meeting.

The latest plan fell far short of the two-thirds needed to pass the Bangkok conference. It garnered 38 votes in favour, 42 against and 46 abstentions.

Sanity and good science prevailed.

See the full story here.

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CITES Secretariat recommends rejecting US proposal to ban polar bear trade

I missed this somehow when I discussed the upcoming (March 3-14) CITES vote on banning polar bear trade (here). But a recent story in the Nunatsiaq News (excerpt below) alerted me to this recommendation by the CITES Secretariat, which rather echoes my December post, “did the PBSG game the polar bear listing process” as well as my last post,  “Ten good reasons not to worry about polar bears”:

Re: Proposal 3 Ursus maritimus (Polar bear) – Transfer from Appendix II to Appendix I
(CoP16 Doc. 7, Annex 2-p. 10 back up here)

Recommendation by the Secretariat

In accordance with the criteria in Annex 1 and the guidelines in Annex 5 of Resolution Conf. 9.24 (Rev. CoP15), the global population of Ursus maritimus does not appear to be small, the area of distribution of this species extends over several million square kilometers and is not restricted and there is insufficient evidence to show that the species has undergone a marked decline in the population size in the wild (when applying the definitions, explanations and guidelines in Annex 5). Whilst the guidelines provide for population declines to be projected by extrapolation to infer likely future values, in this instance such a projection is heavily dependent on estimates of future sea ice coverage which vary widely. An Appendix I listing would not appear to be a measure proportionate to the anticipated risk to the species at this time.

Based on the available information at the time of writing (late January 2013), the Secretariat recommends that this proposal be rejected.

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Where were the appeals to feed starving polar bears in 1974?

The so-called “policy paper” that polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher has been promoting over the last few weeks, which I commented on briefly when the press release came out, is still grabbing headlines. Online news outlets continue to run stories on this bizarre discussion of what officials might decide to do 40 years from now if global warming causes Western Hudson Bay polar bears to spend 6 months on land (Molnar et al. 2010), causing some of those polar bears to starve (see here, here, and here) – as if this is something likely to happen within the next couple of years.

But forget imagined future starvation: where was the media attention on the plight of starving polar bears back in 1974  and 1975 when polar bears were actually starving in large numbers in the eastern Beaufort Sea?

At least two of the co-authors of the paper getting all the attention – Drs. Ian Stirling and Nick Lunn – witnessed polar bears starving in the Beaufort in 1974 because of an especially cold winter and said nothing even though polar bear populations worldwide at the time were already low due to the wanton slaughter of previous decades. Did Stirling and Lunn humanely euthanize the bears they saw starving? Contact the media? [If they did, I’d like to know.] Appeal to governments to make a plan in case it happened again? Apparently not, because it did happen again, at least twice in the following two decades – with no attendant hue and cry then either. No, those Beaufort Sea bears starved to death, time and time again, without a word to the media from Ian Stirling and Nick Lunn.
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