The killing of the polar bear

Can we talk about other things than COVID and systematic racism or not?

Last May, several official sources expressed the opinion that the polar bear would disappear from our planet by the end of the century. Already the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had classified the species as vulnerable, followed by the governments of Canada and Quebec. In our region, therefore, polar bear hunting was banned several decades ago. Really? In fact, it is a major disinformation: the polar bear, threatened by global warming, continues to be hunted happily, with the approval of our governments. According to the latest statistics available, from 2002 to 2007 (see the Federal Species at Risk Public Registry), in Quebec only, in the three habitat zones (South of Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin and Strait of Davis), nearly 1,169 polar bears were killed by hunters, or about 200 per year. Remember that the Quebec population of polar bears is estimated at 5,350 animals, so that a fifth of the herd has been massacred in 5 years … Fragile and vulnerable animals, which see the ice pack shrinking every year …

It is the Inuit, the Cree and the Naskapi who carry out this aberrant hunt, which is forbidden to whites. They do it supposedly under aboriginal rights. At the same time, American and other hunters pay between $ 25,000 and $ 35,000 to participate in these “ancestral” hunts. Check out the beautiful polar bear hunting photos on the sites of specialist outfitters, such as Ameri-cana. Hunters all there are whites, surrounded by Natives, who slaughter polar bears with a big smile.

For my part, I believe that no “ancestral” tradition should be tolerated in this regard. The Inuit and the Cree do not need this to live. We cannot complain on one side of the mouth about the ravages of global warming in the Far North and on the other side tolerate the constant slaughter of an animal on the verge of extinction.