Progressive Wednesday

Casualties of more than just global warming

As early as the summer of 2004, the results of many studies were reported to confirm what many scientists had predicted since the 1970s; polar bears were becoming one of the first casualties of global warming.

Polar bears live in the Arctic, mainly in Alaska and the northern parts of Canada. These marine mammals feed primarily on ringed seals. They use ice floats to feed, mate, and rest. Ice floats that are increasingly farther away. Global Warming has raised the temperature of the Canadian Arctic water by 4 degrees Celsius in the last 50 years, and as a result, polar bears have been drowning, unable to reach a large enough piece of ice.

Here are some other causes of polar bear die-off, in bullet point, for irony’s sake:

• Toxic chemicals such as DDT and PCB have been found in many polar bears, which cause birth defects and lower reproduction rates.
• Drilling for oil greatly affects polar bear habitats and the operation is expected to expand.
• Warmer temperatures have led to the collapse of birthing dens, killing the bears inside.
• Loss of hunting ground from global warming has led to the first observance of cannibalism among polar bears.
• In many countries there are high quotas for how many polar bears are allowed to be hunted.

This last one had me a bit miffed. It seems to me that with a threatened species the quota for hunting them should hover somewhere around zero. American laws prevent the hunting of these animals in Alaska. But, in a break from the norm, Canadian laws are a bit less progressive. So American trophy hunters cross the border into Canada, make their kill and bring it back home. And because of a major legal loophole, they can do this without breaking a single law.

According to the Defenders of Wildlife:

From 2002-2005, a total of 298 requests were made by US citizens to import sport hunted polar bear trophies from Canada. Of these, 252 – a staggering 85 percent – were issued.

So they’ve started to petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make it illegal to import polar bear trophies. Please take 30 seconds to add your signature. We can’t stop Canada from allowing this hunting, but we can stop Americans from bringing them home.

We can debate the ethical and constitutional aspects of hunting and gun control, but I think most of us can come to an agreement when it comes to killing an endangered animal for the purpose of decoration, can’t we?