If we're really so concerned about polar bears, why don't we try not shooting them?

globeandmail.com: Nunavut rejects call to curb polar bear hunt

Nunavut has decided to leave unchanged the number of polar bears it allows to be killed each year in one of the largest areas of the territory, rejecting calls for tighter restrictions on hunting to allow the carnivores' populations to recover.

The Ministry of Environment has left unchanged the annual quota of 105 polar bears from the Baffin Bay region. A formal announcement of the decision is expected as early as today. Setting the quota has been highly controversial because it fixes the number of the animals that are available for both Inuit hunting and international big-game hunters.

The Baffin population straddles Canada and adjacent areas of Greenland. The number of polar bears has dropped from an estimated 2,100 in 1997 to about 1,500 today, due to high levels of hunting by Inuit in both countries.

Environmentalists have warned that the hunting decision may lead to international boycotts against Nunavut, and to concerns that the government, which relies heavily on advice from Inuit hunters, is ignoring the scientific research showing a precipitous plunge in the number of bears.

The hunting quota was set at 105 in 2004, based on the relatively large population numbers from the late 1990s. The harvesting in Nunavut was also based on an assumption that the number of bears killed in Greenland was as low as 18 a year, but subsequent research has shown the actual figure to be about 10 times higher.

"You can't pretend to be looking after polar bears by carrying on with the same level of harvest. It is just totally unacceptable," said Peter J. Ewins, director of species conservation for WWF-Canada, an environmental advocacy group that has lobbied Nunavut to reduce hunting levels. "They've made a huge mistake that caused a 30-per-cent population decline."

He says hunting should be curbed while Greenland, Nunavut and the federal government jointly work on a plan that would allow populations to recover and then be managed on a sustainable level.

The recommendation for the hunting quota was made by the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and accepted by the Ministry of Environment.

But in 2007, the ministry had proposed a range of options to the board, from having a complete harvest moratorium until the population increases to the healthy levels that prevailed in the 1990s, to allowing a scaled-back hunt of 64 animals a year, the previous level.

Mr. Ewins said the government's decision reflected pressure from Inuit hunters.