Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 6.2
Polar bear hunting in the Canadian Arctic
Pongphon Sarnsamak, writing in Thailand's
The Nation
, states:
'Inuit people rely on polar bear for food and money,' Audla said [Terry Audla is
the President of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK)]. 'We do eat polar bear meat.
It is like pork and lamb.' Inuit people do not hunt polar bear for commercial
trade but they do benefit from it. For them, hunting is not a hobby or a luxury
but it is a source of sustenance for the millennia.
To date, polar bears are listed and protected by the CITES's Appendix II,
which allowed legal hunting and international trade but with certain limitations.
Moreover, the polar bear population is managed by the Nunavut's wildlife
management system.
Under this system, there is a polar bear population quota, or total allowable
harvest that limits the number of bears that can be harvested each year. The
total number of bears hunted in populations managed by Nunavut was approx-
imately 460 from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012. In Canada, the average annual
harvest is about 500.
In 2011-2012, 41 bears were killed for hunting sport and about 419 were
killed for subsistence hunting and self defense. 'We have a quota to hunt about
700 polar bears a year but actually we annually hunt about 600 and 50 per cent
of them go to trade,' a 42-year-old hunter said.
They also export polar bear parts like fur to China, Germany, France and
Russia. Previously, they exported to the US as well but have now stopped.
To hunt polar bears, Inuit people will make a decision together about the
number of polar bears that they would be able to hunt per year to ensure that
they do not hunt too many.
Source: Pongphon Sarnsamak (2013).
ecosystems to what is likely to be intolerable evolutionary pressure. A number of
marine creatures which build their shells and skeletons from calcium carbonate may
soon no longer be able to do so. Coral reefs will be endangered and marine biodiversity
generally will be threatened. The upper levels of the ocean are also warming. In the
previous one hundred years this warming has been estimated at 0.6 degrees centigrade,
which may not seem much but does have serious implications that include the
disappearance of Arctic summer ice, local extinctions, temperature drive range shifts
and species invasions and a likely 60 per cent loss of present biodiversity. The
redistribution of commercial fish species through range shifts is likely to result in a
significant decrease in catch potential - anything between 30 per cent and 70 per
cent depending on location and species. There is already evidence of coral bleaching
in the Caribbean and in the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. Oxygen depletion is
the third problem and this has increased considerably since the introduction of
industrial fertilizers in the 1940s. Since the 1960s the number of 'dead zones' in the
oceans double every decade and eutrophication has consequently expanded sometimes
at an alarming rate. Although some marine creatures will be able to adapt to these
