WASHINGTON, D.C. — Safari Club International and Safari Club International Foundation yesterday filed substantive comments with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opposing the proposed listing of the polar bear as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. SCI opposes listing the polar bear because a listing would likely cut off unnecessarily the ability of U.S. hunters to import polar bear trophies into the U.S. from healthy populations in Canada.
SCI presented the Service with two primary arguments against the proposed listing. First, listing the polar bear under the ESA would harm current conservation and management efforts, funded in part by U.S. hunters. A listing would cut off imports into the U.S. and remove the main incentive for U.S. sportsmen and women to hunt the species in Canada. The dollars that U.S. hunters bring to remote native communities in Canada not only funds conservation and management efforts, but makes the polar bear even more valuable to these people. This results in sound conservation and management efforts that benefit the species.
Second, a great amount of scientific uncertainty surrounds predicting the nature and extent of any future global climate change and its impact on the arctic ecosystem and polar bear. Because worldwide polar bear populations currently are healthy, the Service is merely predicting that within the next 45 years, the polar bear will be in danger of extinction. The ESA, however, requires that the Service foresee with a high degree of certainty that this danger of extinction will occur. The scientific uncertainties prevent the Service from making such an affirmative determination.
Ralph Cunningham, president of Safari Club International, said, “Predicting the nature and extent of any future climate change and its impact on the arctic and polar bears is an incredibly complex and speculative endeavor. The science is full of uncertainties. The Service cannot make the affirmative finding of future endangerment necessary to list a species as threatened under the ESA. In addition, listing would harm current conservation efforts, fueled in large part by sport hunting, and place the Service in the position of trying to address global climate change, a role it is ill-suited to play.”
The comments can be read in PDF:
Appendix I - SCI Comments on Polar Bear - 04 09 07.pdf
Appendix II - SCI Comments on Polar Bear - 04 09 07.pdf
Appendix III - SCI Comments on Polar Bear - 04 09 07.pdf
Comments - Final 2 - of SCI on Proposed Polar Bear Listing - 04 09 07.pdf
Contact
Doug Burdin, Litigation Counsel
dburdin@sci-dc.org
(202) 543-8733
