Help save the polar bear

Polar bears face many threats -- from climate change to pollution to oil and gas development. The commercial trade of polar bears skins and parts is also contributing to their alarming decline. Please act today and support a proposal that will prohibit the international commercial trade of polar bear parts through an uplisting of polar bears to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

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Canada is home to an estimated 75 percent of the world’s remaining polar bears, and as a Canadian I feel we must take greater responsibility for their protection.  We have all heard about the dangers these bears face with the devastating impact on sea ice that climate change is causing in the Arctic, but with only 20-25,000 left in the wild, it is also critical that something be done to stop the compounding effect of the international trade in polar bear skins and parts.

Hundreds of polar bears are killed each year in Canada for the international commercial trade. All other countries with polar bear populations – USA, Russia, Denmark (Greenland) and Norway – have banned the international trade in their countries, rightly viewing this trade as a very significant threat to polar bears. In the last five years the prices that polar bear pelts have fetched at Canadian auctions have more than doubled (from $2079 in 2007 to $5,211 in 2012). The numbers of polar bears being killed has grown alongside the price that skins are being sold for, which shows that the situation will only get worse unless something is done.

The USA (supported by Russia) has proposed that polar bears receive the highest protection at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). CITES meets every few years and the next meeting is in March 2013 in Bangkok. The proposal requests that polar bears are listed on Appendix I, which would mean a  ban on international commercial trade.

Giving polar bears greater protection at CITES will not stop Inuit subsistence hunting, or Inuit-guided sport hunting.  But it will be one step towards curbing the international commercial demand for polar bear skin rugs and other unnecessary trinkets.

The best available science shows that two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could be extinct by the year 2050 and, by the end of the century, only a small population in central Canada will be likely to survive. With polar bear trade profits increasing as more and more are killed each year, action must be taken before it is too late.

I am asking that you, and the Canadian government, support the proposal to transfer polar bears to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Please do everything in your power to protect this iconic species, before they are gone forever.

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