quote:

Originally posted by ALF:
Capoward:

Can someone explain to me how Polarbear hunting or any other human endeavor at this time helps with "Polarbear conservation" ?

Alf,

Let's face it - the polar bear is doomed. What any self respecting hunter should do is to pay max dollar to hunt one before they are gone for good. We can then take all that money and buy the local Inuit sunscreen. Two problems solved for the price of one!

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Alf - Here's a little FYI on your Polar Bear question! Polar Bear Quota is issued by the Canadian Govt, to each Inuit Community group known locally as the HUNTERS & TRAPPERS ASSOCIATION. I hunted POLAR BEAR a few years ago out of Hall Beach, Nunavut, Canada. Day 1 I shot a 9'5" Boar, it was a wonderful hunt, great trophy, and a wonderful adventure. Now, the community I hunted out of, and it works the same in the rest of the communities throughout the Canadian Arctic who hunt Polar Bear, do it like this. Hall Beach was issued 10 community Polar Bear tags for the Gulf of Boothia. ONE of those tags per year was put up to sell to a NON-INUIT Sport Hunter, for the purpose of Shooting a Trophy Polar Bear. The remaining 9 Polar Bear permits are used by the Inuits to harvest bears for subsistence purposes.

Now, once again the VERY POOR Inuit community of Hall Beach, with a population of about 600 people were the one's receiving the benefit of the $30,000.00 plus dollars that I, and the single sport hunter who went there each year were providing by paying for this one Sport Hunted Bear! Some communities get more quota, thus they have more SPORT HUNTING PERMITS, but make no MISTAKE! The total quota of 10 Polar Bears from HALL BEACH would have been shot, regardless of whether I as a sport hunter would have used the 1 permit or not!!

KEEP in mind, Polar Bear hunting has not been stopped, nor has the quotas to the commuities been either, just the importation of bears into the US, and following suit, the EU as well. Now the local INUIT communities will continue to kill their quota of POLAR BEARS each year, guaranteed! Unfortunately for them, they are quickly losing the ability to gain any outside benefit from the resouce they take anyway. So tell me HOW that has accomplished any polar bear conservation either??? Seems to be just a bunch of USF&WS folks telling CANADA how to run the show, just as they do all over the world!

Alf - First of all, I NEVER said it was on a large scale!!! Secondly, some of your numbers for the Timbavati, the Klaserie and the Balule combined are NOW wrong in total!! Lastly, let's see, ONE lion in the Timbavati for example, going for over $130,000.00 U.S., takes a lot of photographers to generate that kind of DOUGH, and that's just ONE lion. Man you said it yourself, "sustained utilization"!!! Meaning, it's wanted, beneficial, and necessary!!

Funny, you didn't mention anything about the conversation I had with the ranger of the Balule, at HIS HOME!!!!

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quote:

Can someone explain to me how Polarbear hunting or any other human endeavor at this time helps with "Polarbear conservation"?

I'm not trying to be difficult here but seriously how does shooting them or "educating people" about them or Artic nations getting together and "talking" about them physically help the bears ? Yes an awareness has been created but how does the awareness translate into a physical action other than banning the hunt?

Yes there are a multiple folks "Studying" them, but how does that knowledge lead to conserving them as an action?”

Sport-hunters are conservationists who put their money where their mouth is for their personal enjoyment with a byproduct result of benefit to game and non-game populations; meaning healthy and abundant game populations mean sport-hunter satisfaction and in greater sport-hunter participation.

Sport-hunters have a history of paying fees and taxes for the privilege of hunting game animals. These fees and taxes are expended to study the game animals, to rebuild or improve their habitat, to restore game populations to areas from whence they were previously decimated, to protect the game population from poaching and other unlawful hunting, to compensate landowners for allowing their lands to be used for game habitat and hunting purposes, and to pay for or assist in paying for the people employed to perform mush of the noted work. Non-hunters are allowed to enjoy the end fruits of the sport-hunters efforts without required compensation.

I guess we could look at this from the “preservationist” or the “conservationist” outlook.

The preservationist will fall into the large group “demanding that hunting of polar bears immediately cease and that all vestige of humankind from the polar region and stop all technology so that the icecaps will not melt and the polar bear can live forever unmolested by humankind”. They’ll also feel really great about themselves “because even if polar bears become extinct in their native habitat that they the preservationist have saved them from global extinction as they’re in zoos worldwide for all to enjoy”; by all except perhaps the polar bear.

The conservationist will weight all options available to protecting the polar bear from extinction inclusive of massive number die offs from malnutrition, disease, and predation by large free ranging land concentric bears; all the while developing the basis of a sustainable polar bear population in their “new” native habitat.

So ok, do we allow then to die off from inter and intra species predation and malnutrition and disease or do we identify the sustainable population and gradually remove the excess population via the monetary means of sport-hunting.

Here’s a link to a Canadian newspaper article which discusses the financial benefits polar bear hunting to their Inuit population under current Canadian hunting laws:
http://www.montrealgazette.com...e/1411484/story.html

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It's not like any group of persons suddenly is going to habit the artic, for most it is largely a desolate isolated part of the world.

Well in the last melt down much of the Northern arctic landmass was used for farming.

If polar bear populations are not maintained at numbers the future landmass will sustain then there’ll be no polar bear population at some point in the future…some are predicting their extinction by 2050.

Now if the polar bear is extinct in the Northern polar icecap region what do you think the government entities will do? Will they allow migration to the new landmasses for habitation and perhaps farming purposes as happened during the last melt down? Or will they sell land permits solely for mining speculation? Look at how the governments have been fighting over future mining rights of the future landmasses and perhaps you’ll perceive what most likely will happen.

Timot, you can still hunt a polar bear. What you can't do is bring the skin back to the USA.
Peter.

Timot - In short, your assessment is fairly accurate! The USF&WS is, and always will be ANTI-HUNTING! See a paragraph from my article regarding the possible LION listing to Appendix 1, below. This is the part that most people are missing!!!


Now, Kenya along with huge support from the longtime non-hunting country and anti-hunting community is pushing hard to have the Lion listed on Appendix 1 of CITES. This is an obvious and apparent ploy by both parties to simply put a stop to lion hunting throughout the entire continent. Of course their claims are weak at best, but never the less, it’s a real threat that we must stand up to at once. Not only a threat, but a clever move that most hunters may miss, if they do not pay careful attention! For years now species such as the Leopard have been Appendix 1 CITES animals, and hunting of the leopard is as safe as ever. So, even though lion may go on the Appendix 1 listing, many sportsman think the worst that will happen is the United States Fish & Wildlife Service will simply put an importation “quota” on the lion, and hunting of this great animal will continue as normal. No, no, no my friends, we all need to look a little closer. Now, the wonderful anti-hunting activities of the U.S. government are rearing their ugly heads once again. Leaders of the Service have adopted and want to implement NEW regulations. The regulations make importation of any newly Appendix 1 animal to CITES, almost impossible. A regulation that would obviously be a mighty blow, to not only lion hunting, but all future sport hunting in general. Give an inch, they take a mile! If we let this most harmful precedent get started, get out of the way, cause the trains gonna roll!

Timot - Yes, you're right! Like you mentioned in one of your previous posts as well, it will be OUR responsibility to tell the USFWS why the LION should not be an Appendix 1 animal, before they would allow the importation!!! As you know, TRUST ME FOLKS, that would never in a million years happen!! Once the lion gets listed as APPENDIX 1, it's over! Never again would you get a lion into the U.S.!!! It's just a bureaucratic scheme to appear as though one could possibly get it done, but it would never happen!

I have been going through a similar situation with my POLAR BEAR that I shot in 2003! Mr. Jackson has been working tirelessly for several years on behalf of 9 of us that still have bears from the Gulf of Boothia, sitting in Canada. He copies me on all correspondence, and of course the USFWS sends letters directly to me in response to his many legal actions to get the problem fixed. If I had a week, I could tell you some of the PATHETIC, BULLSHIT, answers and reasons, we continue to receive regarding the denial of the bear hides into the U.S.

Thanks for the kind words, and thanks to you too, for keeping this in the news!! Take care.

Aaron Neilson
Global Hunting Resources

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Aaron Neilson:
Timot - In short, your assessment is fairly accurate! The USF&WS is, and always will be ANTI-HUNTING![QUOTE]

The USFWS is the ENEMY of the United States citizen hunter. As is their way, they are the codependent conscience of the world's wildlife who do not apparently have enough sense to govern their own resources. At least in eht eyes of the all knowing USFWS.

+1

I almost hate to suggest this but an optimal result (max quantity of $ for wildlife in general) can only be achieved if both hunting and non-hunting interests (both individual and collective) participate in conservation by funding it and by being given the chance to fund it. It will mean higher license fees for all of us but it's time to decide if we are capitalists or not. Right now, there are obviously hunting and non-hunting areas in the world and it seems the non-hunting areas are always running around with their hands out to this or that NGO or foundation. The results of their conservation actions are, of course, usually vague and not all that easy to use in soliciting further donations. This could change very quickly. Imagine an NGO solicited to donate $50,000 to save one lion per year from a hunting area. It'd be pretty easy to get that money from them and it would fund conservation as well as hunting revenue.

The only mathematically ideal solution is for governments to set a FIRM quota on lions or polar bear or whatever and then open the bidding up for parts of that quota. Individual elements of this annual offering can then be purchased by hunting outfitters OR non-consumptive conservationists...whoever bids the most. The trick is, the greenies need to be assured that when they buy an elephant tag, it gets torn up and not re-cycled to a hunter or assured that they have not now simply increased the number of PAC tags by one. Then this money needs to be circulated to those enduring crop damage, to insulate the species from poaching, and to expand habitat beyond current borders.

Moral: we as hunters need to be prepared to put our money where our mouths are. We talk about funding conservation, but right now we are only really competing economically with each other in hunting areas. If we really value wildlife, we need to be ready to compete on a much broader scale.

Wow - hats off to you guys for the patience with dealing with ALF , my experience is you cannot sow seeds on infertile land , in this case enlightenment on naive sentimentalism - history alone will proove that the greatest enemy of conservation were these misguided people. They are systematicaly destroying conservation efforts throughout africa to the detriment of the local communities and the wildlife resources - all based on misinformation perpetuated by the likes of PETA etc.
History will reveal to the generations to come that these clowns caused irrepairable damage to the conservation effort in Africa and the world , once can only hope that their short term destructive obsession with anti hunting is as short as their concentration span.

I just can't overlook what intelligent measures funded by our sporting dollars can accomplish for the lion. While I recognize that it is a different animal with different driving factors, I have one comparison to draw. As I sit here now as a young man planning my first trip to Africa I wonder if there will be a wild lion safari be bought at any price twenty years from now. However if I was going on my first safari 30 years ago I may have wondered the same thing about a bull elephant. I'm sure most of you know more about the ins and outs then me, I am simply saying that with intelligent cooperation by all parties involved progress can be made. Now whether we as people are capable of taking the steps to make that progress is another question.