Polar...Barely?

Polar...Bearly?

   Yesterday's news that a segment of the polar bear population had declined almost came as no surprise.  One seems to regularly read of the ice melting at the poles, new shipping lanes opening (China has already moved a shipload of steel through one polar shipping lane, signalling the pattern of things to come), new requests for more drilling of oil.  For the polar bears, however, this simply means longer distances to swim between ice flows, as well as less prey to catch for survival.  In one study, of 80 polar bear cubs born from 2004 to 2007, only 2 have survived. 

   Some of this is also being blamed on climate change.  Said Margaret Williams,  Managing Director of WWF’s Arctic Program, “Here are concrete numbers to show us that the impacts of climate change are happening now. We need to change course if we want to stop further habitat loss and ensure resilient wildlife populations, both in the Arctic and around the world.”

   What's also adding to the decline are the laws still allowing the hunting of polar bears for trophy heads and decorative rugs made of their fur (the fur industry, by the way, is once again booming as fashion once again pushes coats made from rapidly declining animal populations; the cost of a polar bear coat has tripled in the past year).  Those hunting laws exist in Canada and will be up for review in a few years.  The United States doesn't allow trophy or sport hunting but does still allow native groups to shoot polar bears for sustenance, in line with generations of a traditional way of life (even with the addition of snowmobiles and high-powered rifles);  but such traditional ways generally work with the natural population and usually keep the hunted animal population stable (this is still happening in some areas).

   What's striking to me about the people still hunting polar bears for sport or profit is at what point would you, hunter or not, take pride in the taking of the last of a species?  If that decorative icon or musical instrument inlay meant shooting the last elephant, could you, would you, do it?  And would you feel a pride or justification in doing so, perhaps saying you were simply just one of many, eliminating a species forever (as happened with the passenger pigeon which once darkened the skies for 20 minutes at a time as they flew overhead);  would you blame it simply on your upbringing (as the 19-year old Texas cheerleader who proudly posts her kills on YouTube)?  Would you even care, perhaps pleading ignorance.  Or is this all something a bit more basic, an urge we might all harbor to take our place at the top of the predator chain?

   These thoughts were all brought to mind watching the recent X-Men, Days of Future Past movie, one in which the realization occurs that a robotic creature can be created to defeat whatever humans or mutant humans can throw at it.  But the movie, as comic-book as it was meant to be, brought up a good point, that of a different, perhaps alien, species arriving and viewing us humans as backward, as primitive, as offering little to learn and suggesting that it was time we "step aside," (more or less the theme of Matthew McConaughey's character in the HBO series, True Detective).  As the scientist Trask says in the X-Men movie, "We are the Neanderthals now."