Canada to sign polar bear protection treaty

October 29, 2009

(Picture)
A mother polar bear and her cub share a tender moment. Canada will sign
a new agreement on Friday with the governments of Greenland and Nunavut
to protect polar bear populations in their overlapping regions.
Photograph by: Yvette Cardozo, CNS

OTTAWA — Canada will sign a new agreement on Friday with the
governments of Greenland and Nunavut to protect polar-bear populations
in their overlapping regions.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice is travelling to Greenland for the
day to participate in the signing ceremony, the government said in an
advisory released Thursday.

Conservation groups have said they expect the agreement to be similar
to other bilateral deals, such as one signed last year between Canada
and the U.S., as well as a separate agreement between Alaska and
Russia.

"That shared population (between Canada and Greenland) is probably the
most endangered population of polar bears in the Arctic," said Craig
Stewart, director of the Arctic program at WWF-Canada. "This agreement
would provide the structure between the two countries to collaborate on
stabilizing it."

Previous bilateral agreements have set a framework for collaboration on
scientific research and monitoring of population levels, and could also
include specific provisions to address or restrict hunting.

"This is sort of the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle," said Stewart.

A national panel of scientific experts has urged the federal government
several times to list the polar bear as a species at risk, but instead,
it set up a roundtable group to do further research.

The U.S. government has already listed it as a "threatened species"
and, last week, announced plans to designate nearly 500,000 square
kilometres of territory in Alaska as critical habitat that would
restrict economic development.

Prentice said he would wait until a news conference in Greenland on
Friday before commenting on the roundtable's recommendations and the
status of polar bears.

"It will be an important announcement and I'm looking forward to it,"
Prentice said in an interview.

Some experts say specific populations of polar bears in some regions
are at risk from human activity in the Arctic, as well as the effects
of global warming and disappearing sea ice.

Meantime, Prentice slammed a new report by two environmental groups,
sponsored by the Toronto Dominion Bank, which suggested the government
could meet its own climate goals through a plan that would slow the
rate of growth in western provinces, while benefiting other regions.

He said the report was "irresponsible" and "preposterous," because he
believed its recommendations would threaten national unity, along with
the government's revenues and capacity to deliver basic services.