One of those Inuit from Clyde River, Ilkoo Angutikjuak, wrote an accompanying statement of several paragraphs:

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I am sixty-five years old and I have been living in Clyde River, Nunavut, almost my entire life.  When I was young, we hunted by dog team for seal, fish, fox, rabbit, and sometimes caribou in the winter, and we hunted  narwhal and fished for halibut in the summer.  I hunt by Ski-Doo these days, and I enjoy going out on the land when it's not too windy.
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But it's more difficult to predict the weather now, especially the wind.  It seems to get windy suddenly these days.  And there are many other changes, too.

For example, the sea ice isn't the same anymore.  It seems like it's forming only from water, meaning it's much less salty now.  You can even see through the sea ice.  In the past it wasn't clear, it was whitish.  It also breaks up sooner in the spring than it used to, and the winters don't feel as cold.
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We see weird weather in many places on the television these days, and it is warmer here, so maybe that's what is happening.

If the changes continue, I will learn to live with them.  The seals and other animals that depend on the sea ice will move to the shores; the animals will adapt.  I've heard that because they depend on sea ice, polar bears will go extinct, but I don't believe it.  They are very adaptable.  As the sea ice changes, polar bears might get skinnier and some might die, but I don't think they will go extinct.

The only way to react to the changes we are seeing is to be positive.  The people and animals will adapt.
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This strikes me as miserably naive.  Why are the Inuit -- or why is this one, at least -- unwilling to be realistic about the real dangers facing their wild animal neighbors?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

      Perhaps he merely reflects the optimism of the powerless.  Those who have nothing, need hope to survive and wish for the best.

      More troubling is that his opinion is shared by those who have power (middle to rich Americans), who could do something but refuse to do so.

      HIM I understand.

patrick in Beijing

It was yet another form of exploitation when, not long ago, when the oil and gas companies and their GOP friends were talking about drilling in ANWR, some of the Inupiat (the Inuit of the Beaufort Sea coast) gave them the go-ahead, and the pro-drilling crowd gave prominent attention to that in their propaganda.  Of course, the Inupiat were primarily thinking that they might somehow profit from the presence of the energy companies.

So in this case, I fear the Inuit of Nunavut may continue to say that polar bears are not dying out -- and perhaps they believe it themselves -- , because trophy hunting brings in income.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

       You may be correct that they are deluding themselves in order to get the income from trophy hunting.  But, please remember, there is a difference between those who get income from trophy hunting because they have few or even no, alternatives, and those who do so because of greed.

       One of the keys to protecting endangered species is to create economic conditions where they are more valuable alive than dead.

       If people who want them to live won't spend the money, then people who want them dead certainly will.

       Despite the "sin of flight", that is where eco-tourism can come in handy.

patrick in Beijing

Creating economic conditions in which members of endangered species are reckoned more valuable alive than dead -- and not only alive, but allowed to live without fear of capture in their native habitat -- is fortunately a widely recognized principle among conservationists.  Less fortunately, it has not yet been possible always and everywhere to apply it effectively.  E.g., the spectacular wild animals of Africa have been treated fairly well, where sight-seeing tourism and ecotourism are well-developed.  But it is clear that they are by no means "out of the woods," so to speak, for a number of reasons, including the continuing demand of wealthy white hunters for "trophies."

Totally by coincidence, I watched last night the well-loved 1983 movie "Never Cry Wolf."  It is based on the experiences of the Ontario/Saskatchewan naturalist and writer Farley Mowat, who back around 1950 was sent by the Canadian government to the Kazan River valley in what is now western Nunavut to gather evidence of predation by wolves on caribou.  The government, heeding reports from Euro-Canadian hunting interests, wanted to blame an alleged decline in caribou numbers on the wolves, and thus to justify the wolves' elimination.  In fact, Mowat found that the wolves did not prey exclusively on caribou, and that the effect of wolf predation was beneficial to the vitality of the caribou population.

The movie comes across rather as a kind of morality play than a fully coherent and credible story, the characters being more or less symbolic.  There are two prominent Inuit characters, one a benevolent elder whose animal spirit-guide is the wolf, the other a younger man who hunts animals not for immediate sustenance but to sell their pelts.  The latter has a hand in the deaths of the very wolves whom the narrator/hero had been observing, to whom he (and we the viewers) had grown attached; it is unclear if he guided the white hunters to that location, or if he himself killed those wolves.  But it is significant that whereas through most of the movie he has had but a single tooth in his mouth, at the end, following his windfall, he shows off a full set of false teeth.  I.e., the killing of those wolves may have been tragic, but we can hardly blame the Inuit for their complicity, when we are complicit in their miserable destitution.

For his part, Farley Mowat not only has been a major promoter of wolf conservation, but also he awakened the Canadian government to the needs of the "caribou Inuit," those living in the interior to the NW of Hudson Bay.  He has not seen a need to "take sides."

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

      Fawley is an amazing person, and worthy of our adoration.  The film is quite good too.

      You are right when you define the principal but point out the difficulty in applying it.  Which got me thinking about another film related to this subject.

      Have you see the Chinese film KeKeXiLi??  It is about the Tibetan Antelope (which is doing better these days) and the heroic struggle of people to protect it from poachers.

      Great film.  I saw it twice, and heard the director speak once (he explained that he had to change the ending to suit Western investors who wanted something more upbeat).

      It got me wondering, just what in the heck were people poaching them for?  Medicine?  What?

      Turns out that their fur is used to make a special kind of scarf that retails for thousands of dollars in upscale boutiques in Europe and America.  Oh.

patrick in Beijing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_antelope

Note reference to the new railroad to Lhasa, which passes through the antelope's range.  In a report in the latest New York Review of Books, Pankaj Mishra, writing about a couple of pro-Tibet activist/writers in Beijing, mentions the much-publicized attempts to design the railroad so that it is minimally intrusive to the antelope.

I shall look out for KeKeXiLi.  Can you understand Mandarin?  Or, did you see an English-language version?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

        When the railroad opened, there were lots of tv reports about how it was built so as not to disturb the antelopes.  The film tells the story from the 1990's, things have apparently improved quite a bit for the antelopes, but poaching remains a problem.  

        The film was mostly in Tibetan, so it ended up with Chinese subtitles.  It is mainly understandable even if you don't speak the language (smile), but I saw it several times, the last one had English subtitles!

        I don't know what kind of distribution deal they got in the West.  A lot of "art" films don't seem to make it outside of the country except to a film festival once in a while.  A lot only really have a market here at film festivals.  Fortunately, Beijing has a number of them!!!

        The Chinese government has been accused of limiting the number of Hollywood films allowed in to the country to protect the national film industry.  I don't know if this is true or not, but I say "right on"!!!

        My personal fairly recent favorite was the lovely "World Without Thieves".

patrick in Beijing