[LINK] "Inuit angry over U.S. proposal to eliminate all trade in polar bears"

[rfmcdonald]

This article originally taken from the Canadian Press news agency doesn't touch at all on the issue of whether or not a practice deemed to be dangerous to the survival of a threatened species should be legitimated just because it's practiced by an indigenous people. I'm disagree, strongly: once you start creating exceptions for one group then you'll have to create exceptions for another, then others, and eventually you'll have a flawed protection regime if a regime at all. Defending any ill-thought practice on the grounds of tradition is, well, not very intellectually respectable anyways.

Canadian Inuit are outraged over a U.S. plan to use an international treaty to eliminate all trade in polar bears anywhere in the world.

They say it would cripple one of their few industries and they're calling on the federal government to step in.

"We're fighting with Goliath here," said Gabriel Nirlungyak, director of wildlife with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., which oversees the Nunavut land claim.

"We want our government to defend us."

On Friday, Tom Strickland, the United States assistant secretary of the interior, released a proposal to the 175 countries which have signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. It says polar bears should be moved to a classification that would outlaw all commercial trade in the animals.

"The proposals submitted this week will improve protections for dozens of declining species, while improving enforcement and implementation of (the convention) for many others," Strickland said in a release.

The bears are threatened by habitat loss due to melting sea ice caused by climate change, he said.

Previous moves by the American government have already killed most of the market for U.S. sport hunters by preventing them from bringing hides back with them. If the current proposal is accepted at the convention's next meeting in March, it will wipe out all other markets, said Nirlungyak.

"If this goes ahead, it will stop all sport hunts. It will be quite devastating."

Um, good?