Featured interview: U.S. lawyer John Jackson on polar bear hunt
Polar bears remain on ice - Feature interview of the week with American John J. Jackson III of Conservation Force
It is hard to believe, or at least for us it is, that up to 60 polar bears are tucked away in Canadian freezers, waiting for the American hunters who killed them to figure out a way to get their trophies across the Canada/US border. And yet this is the case.
In May 2008 the US put the polar bear on their endangered species list thus triggering a whole new set of rules and regulations, including the ban on import of the animal or parts of it. Canada, however does not list the polar bear as endangered and indeed it allows and facilitates hunting.
John Jackson is a lawyer for the American hunters rights organisation Conservation Force. On August 6 he was interviewed by the CBC’s As It Happens and we of MoreCanadian.com tracked him down for our in-depth Interview of the Week.
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John Jackson: The listing of the polar bear is unprecedented. It is listed when no more than a fraction of one percent of the population has declined (Western Hudson Bay 190/24,500) (if at all) because of speculative projections of the melting of summer sea ice in some areas over the next 50 years.
MoreCanadian.com: Is it true that native Canadians have licenses to hunt polar bears and that those are sold to American hunters? Is that what happened in these cases?
John Jackson: Yes it is and was. The bear are taken anyway. The quota is the same. The Inuit simply share a part of their quota with non-residents as they choose. It has been an extra incentive to manage the bears better as well as necessary revenue for all purposes.
MoreCanadian.com: Do you think polar bears should be on the endangered species list in the first place?
John Jackson: No, they should not. The listing was premature and too all-encompassing. Why deprive native people of their most valuable resource decades before projected ice melt, including areas where summer meltdown is not forecasted? Most if not all of the bear today will have died of natural causes before the projected ice melt. At least half of the bear are in areas not projected to melt in the summer. Many bear do well without summer ice, like the Davis Strait population which is increasing and has never had summer ice. Many learned meteorologists believe that the 11 year long solar cycles are important and that we will be in an unpleasantly cold period by 2020. Many areas will improve for that 11-year period. Much of the Arctic ice has been too thick and permanent to support bear and prey and should improve as it warms.
MoreCanadian.com: Would hunters still come to shoot polar bears even if they cannot bring back their trophies?
John Jackson: Far fewer hunters will come and those that do will not be willing to pay as much because they can’t bring their trophies home. The price of the hunt will fall because of the decline in U.S. demand, the practically total loss of the U.S. tourist hunting market, which is the largest in the world. When the U.S. market opened in 1996 due to 1994 Amendments to the MMPA, the price of the hunt climbed from $13,000-$15,000 to over $30,000. In May 2008 when the bear was listed, the hunts were going for $32,000 to $48,000. Just the cost of whole mounting a polar bear can be $15,000, which is as much as hunts cost little more than a decade ago. The potential revenue in the future would have been even greater.
Let me remind you that very few hunters were willing to risk their safety and go hunting for polar bears before imports were allowed. We are back to that.
MoreCanadian.com: Would you say it is counter productive to put an animal on the endangered species list, after all, polar bears are probably worth a lot more now after being listed and that would make some people want to poach them, right?
John Jackson: The only productive thing is the attention the listing has brought to global warming. Some say that is too much attention. We expect it to harm the bear, not help it. I don’t expect unlawful trade to increase because the listing only prohibits imports into or through the United States and only trophies were importable in the first place.
We don’t think the listing was in the best interest of the bear or Canada. I would expect the commercial price of skins and parts to go up.
MoreCanadian.com: Have you heard of people trying to smuggle polar bears across the border, and can you see that happening/increasing because of this ban?
John Jackson: Yes, but it will not be significant enough to be of conservation concern. If it becomes a concern, you may not like the result, i.e. there is a history of listing species under CITES because of illegal trade, as in the case of elephant ivory.
MoreCanadian.com: Anything else you like to add?
John Jackson: Conservation Force is a conservation organization that is expert at using licensed, regulated hunting as a force for conserving threatened species. Unfortunately, in this case the listing triggered a section of the MMPA that treats an ESA listed species as “depleted”. Depleted species can’t be imported even though the depletion is a legal fiction and the population is robust at this time.
In court we are arguing that all populations of polar bear should not have been listed, Canada’s program should have been taken into account, the listing is premature, threats 50 years in the future are beyond what is “likely” or “foreseeable” (which are undefined terms), the listing harms the bear more than helps it (which should be the first concern) and makes the listing Constitutionally irrational, and much more.
John J. Jackson, III, Conservation Force.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, most of the world’s polar bears will disappear as their habitat continues to shrink. The USGS said that, “our results have demonstrated that as the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear.” They stated that polar bears in their southern range will disappear first as sea ice retreats, as they are forced to come ashore earlier in the year, facing food shortages before they have stored enough fat to last through the summer.
When facing habitat loss due to melting sea ice, the last thing these magnificent animals should be forced to contend with are trophy hunters. In 1972, The Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibited the killing of and trade in all marine mammals, including the sport hunting of polar bears or the import of their trophies. However, in 1994 the trophy hunting lobby tore a loophole in the law, allowing hundreds of sport-hunted polar bear trophies to be imported into the U.S. from Canada. The polar bear’s Endangered Species Act listing once again protected the bears from American trophy hunters wanting to bring a trophy home with them.
Over-hunting of adult polar bears can cause a catastrophic crash in their population. Well more than half of the polar bear populations in the world are either of unknown, severely reduced, or declining status, including (despite Mr. Jackson’s statement to the contrary) Davis Strait. The International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species cites “a potential risk of over-harvest due to increased quotas, excessive quotas or no quotas in Canada and Greenland and poaching in Russia.”
Polar bears should remain protected from overzealous trophy-hunters like John Jackson.
Andrew Page
Senior Director
The Humane Society of the United States