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WASHINGTON, DC, September 24, 2007 (ENS) - The United States and Russia have ratified a treaty for the long-term conservation of the population of the polar bears shared between the two countries. These are about 2,000 bears that inhabit the Alaska-Chukotka or Chukchi Sea between western Alaska and eastern Russia.

The treaty unifies American and Russian management programs that affect this shared population of bears and calls for the active involvement of Native people and their organizations in future management programs.

The treaty provides the framework for long-term joint efforts such as conservation of ecosystems and important habitats, harvest allocations based on sustainability, collection of biological information, and increased consultation and cooperation with state, local, and private interests.

Polar bear in the Chukchi Sea (Photo courtesy U.S. State Department)

Today, habitat loss, illegal hunting, and the diminishing extent, thickness and seasonal persistence of sea ice pose the most serious threats to polar bears.

As a result of these concerns, the polar bear was proposed for listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in January of this year. A decision on the proposed listing is scheduled to be announced in January 2008.

“This agreement is a testimony to years of cooperative conservation efforts among biologists and Native peoples from the United States and Russia,” said the Service’s Alaska Regional Director Tom Melius.

“It protects the ability of the Native people of both nations to continue their traditional ways of life, while helping ensure that healthy populations of one of the Earth’s most magnificent marine mammals will continue to wander the Arctic ice for generations to come,” said Melius.

Several joint research and management efforts between the United States and Russia have been successful in the past but until recently the United States and Russia have managed the shared Alaska-Chukotka polar bear population independently.

In recent years, Melius says, a sizable illegal harvest has occurred in Russia, despite a ban on hunting that has been in place since 1956.

In Alaska, subsistence hunting by Natives is allowed as long as this does not affect the sustainability of the polar bear population.

The Russian government is prepared to enact a decree which would legalize a sustainable harvest by Chukotka Natives. Each country would then have the right to one half of a jointly determined annual harvest limit.

Under the treaty, a sustainable harvest by Alaska and Chukotka Natives is allowed, but taking females with cubs or of cubs less than one year old is prohibited.

The treaty also prohibits the use of aircraft and large motorized vehicles in the taking of polar bears and enhances the conservation of specific habitats such as feeding, congregating, and denning areas.

On October 16, 2000, the U.S. and Russia signed the bilateral agreement on the conservation and management of the shared Chukchi/Bering Seas polar bear population. In July 2003, the Senate, through a unanimous vote, provided its advice and consent. Legislation to implement the treaty was passed during the 109th Congress and signed into law.

Melius says this new treaty enhances and fulfills the spirit and intent of the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears among the United States, Russia, Norway, Denmark (for Greenland), and Canada.

Polar bears at low densities over vast areas of the Arctic. Current estimates of the world’s 19 separate populations range from 20,000 to 25,000 bears.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2007. All rights reserved.