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.

"I think it's built on assumptions that are not tenable and are 
economically destructive and potentially quite divisive in the 
country," Prentice said. "There is no other developed country at the 
table that is accepting the kinds of negative economic consequences 
that are put forward in this report."