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Cecil the lion’s death puts exotic big-game hunts under scrutiny - including Canada’s

Cecil the lion’s death puts exotic big-game hunts under scrutiny - including Canada’s

The American hunter who killed Cecil the lion has become the hunted and the death of the iconic animal has renewed calls to ban trophy hunting in Africa.

But what about Canada’s own sport hunting for exotic animals?

Canada is the only Arctic country that allows trophy hunting of polar bears.

More than 76,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org pressing the federal government to put an end the sport hunt.

“Polar bears are some of the most majestic and beautiful animals in the world,” it says.

Pollution and global warming both threaten the future of these animals, it says, “but the most immediate threat is hunting.”

The petition claims more than 1,000 polar bears are killed annually. Federal statistics, however, paint a different picture. They estimate that about 300 bears are killed annually.

Nunavut government statistics show that 33 of 319 bears harvested in 2012-2013 (the most recent year available) were killed by sport hunters. The rest were subsistence hunts by Inuit.

“Sport hunting of polar bears is currently only legal within Canada and is an important financial opportunity for communities in Nunavut and the Northwest Territory,” says Tana Silverland, spokesperson for Nunavut’s Environment Ministry.

“Hunting guides also have a sense of pride in what they do and in the opportunity to demonstrate their skills to visiting hunters.”

Norway allows only defensive kills of polar bears in its jurisdiction; the U.S. and Greenland allow Indigenous hunting.

Sport hunters must be accompanied by licensed outfitters and only use traditional hunting methods – by foot or dog team.

“Sport hunting provides local guides an opportunity to work on the land and use traditional skills (e.g. reading and responding to weather conditions, controlling a dog team and sled, interpretation of sex and age of a bear from its tracks),” Silverland tells Yahoo Canada News in an email exchange.

“These skills are not utilized in a typical employment opportunity in their communities.”

Silverland says each local hunting and trapping organization is allotted a certain number of annual tags for hunting the bears. They decide if and how many of those tags will be allocated for sport hunting.

Southern booking agents charge non-resident hunters $20-60,000 for a sport hunt, depending on the details of the trip. Local hunt outfitters receive up to 60 per cent of that fee, Silverland says.

Guides earn between $4,700 and $9,000 per hunt and usually so two in the eight- to 12-week hunting season.

“Income from the hunt helps to meet hunters’ cost of living, such as heat, food, clothing and investments in equipment for future subsistence hunts,” Silverland says.

Meat from sport hunts usually remain in the community, she says. Big-game hunters, mostly Americans, want only the heads, pelts, claws and – sometimes - the penis bones.

The sport hunt trade has declined drastically, though, since the United Stated government listed polar bears as threatened in 2008. Hunters are not allowed to import polar bear parts into the U.S.

Canada, the U.S., Denmark (Greenland), Norway and Russia co-operate on the management of polar bears in the Arctic under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Polar Bear Specialist Group.

The group estimates there are between 20,000 and 25,000 bears in the world. Canada is home to about 60 per cent of them.