When environmentalist activists want cuddly creatures for poster purposes, nothing beats Canadian.

Forget our most endangered species like the black-footed ferret, northern swift fox and Vancouver Island marmot. They don't stand a chance of becoming fundraiser-worthy victims when there are fuzzy seals and majestic polar bears to protect through international publicity.

The baby seal was the star last month when the Farley Mowat protest ship was seized by Canadian authorities for illegally interrupting the annual hunt. Partly due to that publicity, the European Commission is threatening to ban all Canadian seal product imports for no apparent reason other than the wide-eyed youngsters are so dang cute and they graphically gush blood all over ice floes during a slaughter captured annually on television.

Now it's the majestic polar bear, granted mostly symbolic protection by Americans this week for being at risk of becoming the highest-profile casualty of global warming as its mostly Canadian domain disappears with the Arctic Ocean ice melt.

Ironically, the polar bear's primary diet is the seal and it has a particular culinary affinity for the young pups it grabs by the head and chews, a death surely more prolonged than the fatal whack of a sealers' hakapik.

But, moving right along, the "threatened" status afforded the Canadian great white is interesting. One might not associate that alarmist term with an animal whose Arctic population has doubled to 25,000 bears in the last 40 years, with only two of the 13 pockets of population experiencing any decline and the rest enjoying a boom.

Yet somehow, despite that population surge, its long history of surviving even warmer climates and having lived off much reduced sea ice, the polar bear is now the world's photogenic canary in the global warming coal mine.

When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put up its suggestion for a 'threatened' designation for the species, the service was swamped with a record-shattering 670,000 responses, or more than 25 for every living polar bear on the planet.

"The polar bear cannot wait much longer," insisted a top official with the Centre of Biological Diversity in Washington. "The window of opportunity to save the polar bear is closing rapidly."

This frenzy of concern forced a reluctant U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne to almost visibly hold his nose while announcing that he was "compelled" to bestow the beast with the "threatened" status while taking pains to stress, "this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting."

DAUNTING CHALLENGE

In other words, anything done to protect the species won't do any good unless climate change is halted and reversed -- a daunting challenge that may be beyond human manipulation.

Of course, nothing is more confounding and contradictory than the global warming question because the so-called "junk science" practiced by the alleged "climate change deniers" is backed by evidence to suggest this is merely the latest incarnation of regular planetary warming periods. They add that arbitrarily extrapolating a short-term meteorological trend can paint the inaccurate picture of an oncoming apocalypse.

et even on the smaller question of the polar bear's status, a divisive debate rages.

An arms-length analysis last month from the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife concluded the polar bear's future merely rated a passive "concern" which, in the dialect of these scientists, means wait-and-see.

POLITICALLY CORRECT NOISE

While Environment Minister John Baird made plenty of politically correct bear noise Wednesday -- "it's a great iconic Canadian beast whose survival, its ability to thrive, is something that's tremendously important to us" -- his government has made the right call in waiting for fresh scientific data later this summer before announcing further polar bear protection plans.

Perhaps the correct picture of the polar bear's plight is, ironically, the notorious shot of a four-bear family apparently stranded and doomed to drown as an iceberg fragment melts beneath their paws.

Unfortunately for those who have used it as the basis for campaigns to save the species from climate change, their interpretation was entirely bogus.

"They were healthy, fat and seemed comfortable on their iceberg," according to its photographer.

In the global warming coal mine, perhaps the canaries are fat, healthy and increasingly numerous.  Source

Average user rating