An award-winning nature photographer and conservationist, Ole Liodden, has stated that unless the hunting of polar bears is clamped-down on they may not survive as a species in the long-term. His remarks come amid calls for Canada to ban the practice of polar bear hunting and for the United States and China to ban the trade in polar bear hides.
Conservationists are already very worried about the future of polar bears due to global warming. Global warming is melting much of the ice that polar bears use for their hunting grounds and which serves as their camouflage. Without a ban on hunting it may make it impossible for the bears to survive this double-threat.
Liodden wrote recently:
"Most of the Polar bear conservation projects today are only focusing on climate change and global warming. It is very important to protect the Arctic environment to secure the ecosystem with drifting ice for Arctic animals, but it is also important to protect the animals themselves.
Polar bears have become the main symbol for global warming, and big conservation campaigns are published with images of polar bears. Human removals (killing) of polar bears are rarely mentioned in these campaigns at all.
A big problem when working with polar bear conservation is the fact that information about polar bear hunting is hidden, very limited, only available for shorter periods or only referred to as 'sustainable' without any concerns."
"The polar bear is one of the most exclusive species for trophy hunters to pursue. But it is the mammal species least suitable because of low cub survival, low reproduction rate, and climate change. Although a warmer climate may largely determine the future distribution of polar bears, the vast majority of population reductions over the past 30 years are attributable to unsustainable hunting."
It is believed that only between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears still exist in the wild and that since the 1960s, over 50,000 have been killed for their furs, which are used as decoration. Thankfully, the hunting of the bears is now banned in Norway, the United States and all other countries which the bears make home, with Canada being the clear exception. It is believed that rising demand for 'luxury' items, such as polar bear furs, in China, is one of the main reasons that there has been a continued increase in the number of bears being killed.
Estimates suggest that the number of polar bears in the wild could further half by the middle of the century, and experts are clearly not optimistic about the future in the wild for these magnificent beasts. Péter Molnár, a researcher at the University of Toronto Scarborough, backed this gloomy outlook, saying to the National Geographic:
"It doesn't look like they're going to be around for very much longer in most populations. [There is} very strong evidence that these declines will just get worse as the climate changes."
Hopefully, governments and environmentalists can work together and preserve a future for the world's largest land predator.
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