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NEWS: Canada’s polar bear management is sound, Inuit tell U.S. government

Main Quebec NEWS: Canada’s polar bear management is sound, Inuit tell U.S. government
02.10 / 21:06 nunatsiaqonline.ca

February 10, 2016 - 4:00 pm
"Up-listing to Appendix 1 will be detrimental to our hunting activities"

Inuit representatives are on Capitol Hill in Washington this week to make a last ditch effort to convince their American counterparts to reconsider the way they think about polar bears.

The United States, as a member of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), has tried in 2010 and 2013 to up-list polar bears into an Appendix I classification — where they would be deemed in immediate danger of extinction.

An Appendix I listing would come with an automatic ban on all international trade of polar bear parts.

But in the months ahead of the next world wildlife conference, CITES CoP17, to be held in South Africa in September, Inuit groups hope to convince the U.S. otherwise.

“This is really Canada making a last push to explain to the U.S. that up-listing to Appendix 1 will be detrimental to our hunting activities,” said Adamie Delisle-Alaku, vice-president of renewable resources at Nunavik’s Makivik Corp.

“It’s really a last attempt.”

Delisle-Alaku is joined in Washington this week by representatives from the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. the Nunatsiavut Government and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami.

With the U.S. presidential primaries underway, Delisle-Alaku admits that it’s not the best time to get the U.S. government’s ear.

Still, Inuit representatives spent the day Feb. 9 in congressional meetings at the House of Representatives and with officials from the Council on Environmental Quality and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“We presented what’s going on with polar bears… how Canada has one of the best, if not the most robust, polar bear management [plans] in the world.,” Delisle-Alaku said.

“It’s the usual spiel; [we’re saying] that polar bears are being used as an iconic poster child for climate change,” he said, “and we need to differentiate the linkage between climate change and polar bear decline.”

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