The Endangered Alaskan Polar Bear

We always reserve the right to stray a little off topic at this site, particularly because I believe that if you read this site you're a thinking soul.

So it is that I happen to be writing this morning about the rascally polar bear. This is honestly just an extension of what may have started as the Sarah Palin Bullshit Watch, which was itself always more concerned with illuminating Alaska, which Slate awesomely described as:

"the state the lower 48 thinks might not be real."

Too funny! However, in this same Q&A session that Slate hosted, there was the following exchange:

Prescott, Ariz.: I have one idea for Obama. Make a commercial with lots of cute polar bears running around and talk about Sarah Palin's science-ignoring crusade to keep polar bears off the endangered species list.

Emily Bazelon: Ah, playing the polar bear card. And it could be paired with making the point that Palin's stance here undercuts McCain's support for fighting global warming. (Though to be fair, they aren't the same thing.)

The response that Slate gives isn't bad at all, but it's the comment that Palin's position is a "science-ignoring crusade" that should be flushed out.

I'd like to point out a great article, "Of Ice and Men", by Cultural Survival Quarterly in their Summer 2008 issue. I had actually meant to write about this a couple weeks ago, but.. y'know.

The article does a great job of describing why Alaska's indigenous population is opposed to listing the polar bear as an endangered species. They throw the "science-ignoring" comment back in your face:

"It’s not surprising that the Iñupiat’s discussion of polar bear biology, behavior, ecology, habitat, and population was more sophisticated than that of the Fish and Wildlife representatives; after all, the federal representatives had flown in from Washington or Anchorage, and would fly out in a day or two, while the Iñupiat lived their entire lives in the polar bear’s habitat. They were not new to the polar bear, and they weren’t impressed by 30-year studies that Fish and Wildlife called “long-term.” The Iñupiat had cultural knowledge about polar bears—and the rest of their ecosystem—that went back far longer."

The article will expose you to a different way of looking at the issue - the impotence, rather than importance, of listing the polar bear as endangered and the consequences it has on a people whose way of life is very far removed from yours, all for the sake of making some - in their ticky-tacky little boxes on the hillside - feel like they're making a positive difference.

"In short, the science brought by the Fish and Wildlife representatives to justify listing the polar bear as threatened looked great on paper, but was incomplete—even to other scientists—and ignored Iñupiat traditional knowledge. And putting the polar bear on the endangered list wouldn’t stop illegal poaching in Russia, or the sea ice from retreating, or anything else that was actually affecting polar bear populations. In fact it would mask the real issue of climate change.

The Iñupiat solution was for Washington to address climate change head-on by legislating global-warming preventatives, and leave the polar bears to the native peoples of the Arctic. After all, they are subsistence hunters who manage animal populations so that they will be there in the future. The word “sustainable” has been in the American consciousness for about a generation, while it has been the cornerstone of Iñupiat life for millennia. Not taking their lead in this issue would be a terrible loss of opportunity, especially considering that they are living on the front line of global warming, where change is felt first and foremost."

The article is a very good read, so I highly encourage you to drop by if not actually pick up an issue of Cultural Survival in your local bookstore or even subscribe/donate. The group promotes "the rights, voices, and visions of indigenous peoples" who, as they say,

"endure forced assimilation, discrimination, exploitation by powerful economic interests, and poorly considered development policies—all of which threaten their cultural survival."

This issue of Washington, D.C. further interfering in the way of life followed by Alaska's indigenous population is probably a good example of these "poorly considered development policies" and "forced assimilation".