Why is polar bear hunting allowed?

Nanook, the polar bear, has long been an integral part of Inuit culture: feared, respected, and a source of fur and meat. Minimal, sustainable hunting doesn't threaten the polar bear's future, scientists say, but global warming does. Details...

Answered by Dr. Steven C. Amstrup, chief scientist at Polar Bears International and USGS polar bear project leader in Alaska for 30 years.



Over most of the polar bear's range, hunting is now governed by a quota system designed to keep the kill within the bounds that populations can support. Each village gets a number of tags allowing hunters residing there to take the number of bears the population can sustain. In some regions, local people can chose to "sell" some tags to sport hunters. That is, they guide a non-resident hunter out on the ice to hunt bears and they allow that non-resident to shoot the bear they might have shot. Typically, this "sport" hunting results in the take of fewer bears because the sport hunters are normally not as successful as the local hunters.




For more on the role of indigenous people in the arctic ecosystem, see these two blog posts by Moki Kokoris: Revelations from the Desk of a Reformed Activist and Polar Bear Hunting Viewed Through Indigenous Crosshairs.

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