Polar bear threat “hysterical” Netser tells U.S. last week
GN challenges "worst case" global warming predictions
Nunavut’s environment minister, Patterk Netser, was in Washington, D.C. last week to counter what he called the “hysterical message” that polar bears are on the brink of extinction due to Arctic ice melt.
On March 5, Jane Cooper, his assistant deputy minister, and Robert Carson, the assistant deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs, presented a brief to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
The agency’s hearing received reactions to its proposal to list polar bears as “threatened” under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
Netser told the hearing the status of polar bears should be based on “how polar bears are doing” and not be based on the need “for a poster series for a good cause.”
He said Nunavut contains or shares most of the polar bear populations in the world, and that “most of our populations are abundant, productive and sustaining the current managed harvest levels.”
Netser said declaring polar bears to be a threatened species would be “premature and inconsistent.”
In his presentation, tabled March 8 in Nunavut’s legislature, Netser also challenged the impact and accuracy of “worst case” climate models, which say within 30 to 50 years summer sea ice will have vanished from almost the entire Arctic region.
Netser called these climate models “speculative” and said even if these models are correct, another 50 years remains before polar bears would actually begin to be threatened as a species.
And even if certain polar bear populations are eventually affected by a loss of ice, he said more than half the world’s polar bears will still live in areas with some ice cover.
“Does that sound like a species headed for extinction?” he asked.
A move to list polar bears as threatened would do nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions responsible for the melting ice, but it will hurt the hunters in Nunavut, he said.
Netser also challenged the thoroughness of scientific surveys, which say polar bear populations in the Western Hudson Bay has declined.
And he bashed those who say polar bears are coming into communities because they’re starving. He said hunters report that polar bears have remained abundant in spite of decreasing ice cover.
“The suggestion that they are so easily misled is not only silly, but also shows a disturbing lack of respect for indigenous knowledge,” Netser said.
The five-person group from the Government of Nunavut left a written presentation, which, Netser said, U.S. officials promised to study.
But the response to Netser’s presentation appears to have been lukewarm.
“They didn’t seem to understand what we were trying to say, and they didn’t seem to want to pay attention,” Netser said in the legislature.