Late last month, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposed to name the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.  Nunavut Environment Minister Patterk Netser has now gone on record against the proposal.

Faced with another examination of its wildlife practices, the government of Nunavut is preparing to defend its polar bear policies where it believes they need to be defended — the court of southern public opinion.

"That's where the problem is," Patterk Netser, Nunavut's Environment Minister, said yesterday from Coral Harbour. "The problem is down there. Not here."

Nunavut is being caught between environmentalists using the powerful predators as a lever to move the U.S. government on the issue of climate change and politicians seeking an opportunity to look good, Mr. Netser says.

See also this statement by Dr Mitch Taylor, Polar Bear Biologist with the Nunavut government, pointing out that there is no evidence that Canada’s polar bears are endangered.  (More from Dr Taylor here.)

An Iqaluit newspaper charges that the proposal to list the polar bear as endangered arises, not from scientific consideration of the bear and its habitat, but from a political fight to force the Bush administration to acknowledge global warming.

The announcement is a response to a petition launched in February of 2004 by an environmental organization called the Centre for Biological Diversity. In December of 2005, two other groups, the Natural Resources Defence Council and Greenpeace U.S.A., joined the effort and helped launch a lawsuit against the U.S government.

Those groups say shrinking sea ice threatens polar bear populations. Their goal is to force the Bush administration to acknowledge the reality of climate change and adopt policies aimed at reducing the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

Those groups are now declaring victory, because they believe they’ve forced the Bush administration to stop denying the science that reveals the true extent of global warming.

“It’s an affirmation that global warming is real,” Brendan Cummmings, a lawyer for the Centre for Biological Diversity, told the Guardian newspaper last week.

Swell.  Environmentalists score political points against hated Washington Republicans, and the livelihood of Inuit hunters in northern Canada is mere collateral damage.

US Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) recalls that, only a few years ago, the US Geological Survey reported that Alaska polar bear populations “may now be near historic highs”.  Sen Inhofe argues that the proposal to list the polar bear as endangered shows that the Endangered Species Act is “broken”.

h/t for Inhofe statement: Greenie Watch

Previous related posts:

UPDATE (5 Jan.): Follow-up: Polar bears threatened by computer models