The worldwide population of polar bears has doubled in the past thirty years. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s the gist of a report by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released on January 30, 2008:

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s.  A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations “may now be near historic highs.”

polar-bear-tongue

Better yet, let’s listen to a scientist who has been studying polar bears for the past thirty years, both as an academic and as the Canadian government’s director of wildlife research in its most important polar bear habitat, and who is widely regarded as the world’s top authority on the creatures. Here’s Canadian scientist Dr. Mitchell Taylor’s take on the matter:

It is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria…There aren’t just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears. Scientific knowledge has demonstrated that Inuit knowledge was right.

Inuits, by the way, are what most of us call “Eskimos,” which is to say: the people who actually live among polar bears (rather than those who concoct computer models about them from high-rise corner offices). Inuits have been scoffing at the global-warming wizards and their polar bear hogwash for years.

Eskimos

And yet, despite all of the above, on May 14th 2008 U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, invoking the U.S. Endangered Species Act, proclaimed polar bears as a “threatened species,” in effect threatening more of them with death by decreasing their value (stick with me here.)

In 1972 polar bears had already lost value in the U.S. when the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibited their hunting in Alaska. (And no, it’s not the hunting ban that has caused their increased numbers; they proliferated equally in Canada which continued the polar bear season.)

So after 1972 U.S. hunters started hunting polar bears in Canada. But Kempthorne’s proclamation (upheld by Interior Sec. Salazar in the current administration) means that U.S. hunters will be barred by law from bringing their trophy bear skins into the U.S. So, again, polar bears have lost value.

Lately hunters (primarily from the U.S.) had been paying $30,000 for the chance of whacking a polar bear during a grueling hunt in the Canadian arctic on dog-sleds and in sub-zero weather. If successful, then the hunter’s taxidermist landed another $5,000 or so for converting the beast’s epidermis into an infuriatingly politically-incorrect rug for the hunter to display to his politically-correct guests at dinner parties. Generally speaking, the most spirited reactions from guests came after uncorking the eighth bottle of wine.

Most of these guests were usually his wife’s friends from the local Art Council and Kayak Club and spittle sometimes landed on his valuable rug of thick white fur, but without lasting damage. The often lipstick-smeared sprayings quickly evaporated and whatever effort was involved in wiping them up was well worth the spectacle of pulsating veins on pretty crimson-hued foreheads with earrings jangling below from the bobbing motions, along with the slender, perfumed (but always white-knuckled) fists constantly thrust to within millimeters of his nose.

“Ah, but they look so sexy that way!” the hunter would always remark to his glowering wife as she frantically motioned the guests into another room. “Like a woman in a Tango!” the smirking hunter persisted. “In the words of legendary poet, Jorge Luis Borges: “The tango shows that a fight may be a celebration! ”

tango

Alas, the hunter’s philosophical reflections were always lost on his guests– not to mention his wife.

At any rate, most of the $30,000 spent by the hunter for his foolproof conversation piece went to Canada’s Inuit (Eskimo) communities whose members had served as his guide, cooks, outfitters, etc, during the hunt. The Eskimos also got the polar bear meat, which has been a historic staple in their diet.

“It’s Inuit food,” says Canadian Inuit Jayko Alooloo in an interview with Canada’s CTV, “like cows for you southern people.”

In keeping with the overwhelming consensus among his people, Alooloo  regards the newly-designated status of polar bears as “endangered” as a complete crock.

“They’re actually increasing every year.” he says. But what does he know? He only lives among them. Whereas, from his Washington D.C. office, former U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne relied on computer weather model to predict that in fifty years, due to “global warming’s” effect on the arctic ice fields, polar bears will decrease in numbers. My own weatherman’s computer models rarely get it right for the next four days. Kempthorne’s nailed it for the next fifty years!

Recreational hunters (again, overwhelmingly from the U.S) pumped $3 million a year into Eskimo communities for polar bear hunts. These Inuit communities get a quota of bear tags (licenses) from the Canadian government to use as they see fit. They can hunt the bears themselves for the meat, and for the roughly $1000 per hide if they sell it. Or they can sell the tag to a recreational hunter for $30,000 –serve as his guide, (i.e. he can experience most of their culture’s traditional and integral parts of the hunt) and still keep the meat. Only a federal bureaucrat could miss the implications here.

magritte

In fact, these hunts being such an integral part of their culture, a few Inuits elect to retain the tags for themselves to do the killing. The new ruling means that now they’ll probably keep them all. A recreational hunt lasts a few days and—like all hunting–does not always climax with kill. But the tag is considered used once it’s sold to a recreational hunter, kill or no kill. On the other hand, Inuit hunters always kill a bear because they have months to fill that tag. So now that U.S. recreational hunters are barred by U.S. law from bringing home their conversation-piece rug, the Inuits have no choice but to keep their tags, assuring that more polar bears will be killed.