for chick coop

dangerous species the world around

I cant find it online now, but a story came over the BBC late last night about hunting polar bears in the Canadian far north and the idea that listing the animals as threatened or endangered could simply lead to an underground hunt that would harm the bears and the Inuit people hunting them.
Another story ran this morning in the New York Times about Russias hope that a legalized hunt could also help protect the bears.

For the first time since the Soviet Union banned the practice more than five decades ago, the government is preparing to allow hunters here to kill the bears. The animals are descending with greater regularity on coastal villages in this part of Russia’s far north as a result of shrinking sea ice generally attributed to a warming planet.

. . . Even as many warn that the world’s polar bears are threatened, with the Bush administration proposing to include them on the United States’ listing of threatened species, scientists, environmentalists and native villagers here express hope that a legal hunt could rein in rampant poaching. If hunters are allowed to take at least some bears legally, the reasoning goes, they might be less tempted to break the law for the bear’s meat, consumed locally as an illicit delicacy, and for the thousands of dollars that pelts can fetch.

Click here for the full story. (The picture is from James Hill for the NY Times.)
The radio reporter said the Inuit hunters dont see the animals as the poster pets of climate change theyve become for so many elsewhere. They see them as fierce, dangerous animals.
Which is exactly what US Sen. Ted Stevens said recently when he discussed the issue before the state legislature. In a slip of the tongue, he referred to listing them as a dangerous species.