Sat, Jul 5, 2008 (2:08 a.m.)

The U.S. government banned the import of polar bear hides in May when it declared polar bears a federally threatened species, but a private hunt club has filed notice that it intends to sue the government to allow American hunters who have legally shot polar bears in Canada to bring the hides into the United States.

Safari Club International is seeking to overturn the Interior Department’s ban on hides from polar bears that have been killed and those that will be killed by hunt club members who have scheduled and paid for hunts that will occur in 2009 and 2010, the Associated Press has reported.

Wildlife advocates say sport hunting further stresses the polar bear population, which already is struggling to survive in the face of increasing global warming and massive reductions in the Arctic sea ice that provides a crucial piece of the bears’ habitat.

Trophy hunts of polar bears have been banned in Alaska since 1972, but Canada allows such hunts during a two-month season that restricts the number of bears killed. American sport hunters had been allowed to import hides from Canadian hunts under a 1994 amendment to the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

But U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne declared the bears threatened throughout their entire range and said they could become endangered because of decreasing habitat. As a result the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew the authorization to import hides from bears killed in Canada — including those already dead and awaiting a taxidermist’s work.

Officials from Canada’s Northwest Territory have told Interior Department officials that the ban would, in effect, kill the region’s sport hunting industry, the AP reports.

The United States has committed to protecting the polar bear, not Canada’s sport hunting industry, and we support the Bush administration’s position on the import issue. To tarnish the polar bear’s federal protection by allowing Americans to import hides from bears shot for sport on the other side of the U.S. border would send a mixed — and wrong — message.