THE POLAR BEARS

Polar bears are on thin ice.
As climate change heats up the Arctic, these iconic bears are not only scrambling to stay afloat, they're struggling to dodge the bullets of trophy hunters.

Congress has taken notice and recently introduced the Polar Bear Protection Act (S. 1406/H.R. 2327), which would ban the import of sport-hunted polar bear trophies into the United States.

Polar Bear Survival in Question

A decline in polar bear numbers in recent years has been linked to the retreat of sea ice and its formation later in the year. Ice is also breaking up earlier and this trend is likely to continue. Bears have been forced ashore before they have time to build sufficient fat stores, resulting in thinner, stressed bears, fewer cubs and lower survival rates. Polar bears have even drowned because of melting ice.

Faced with habitat loss and population decline, polar bears are also contending with unscrupulous trophy hunters wishing to lug the pelts of these magnificent animals back to the United States to fill their trophy rooms.
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. The World Conservation Union 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."