Russia Prepares to Legalize Polar Bear Hunting (sorry Sotiria)
As many of us know, the ice caps and floating ice platforms are beginning to melt and this is effecting polar bears in many ways. One important way is that they are having increased trouble hunting food and are beginning to die of starvation, malnutrition and drowning, amongst other reasons.
Russia is a country that is experiencing close to home problems with this because the polar bears are starting to come to the shores where people live to look for food. At the moment hunting these animals is illegal, but we know that does not always stop people. The Russian government has decided that is they allow for a limited amount of hunting that that might cut down on the amount of illegal poaching taking place. If we let the hunters have a little maybe they won't take so much.
This seems like a principle that we have covered in our Econ350 class.
There is obviously an optimal amount of hunting and 0 is not it, sorry Sam! At 0 people are overhunting, so the government has decided to address this by setting some sort of cap, which is still being decided, which will maybe bring the damages to society closer to the damages being felt by the industry. The industry at this point has to pay a high fine if they are caught, maybe it will be incentive to reduce the amount of killing in exchange for a decrease in the amount of potential fines.
7 comments:
Sorry is the exact term needed for this situation. Sorry to the environment, to the current population of the Earth, and to all future generations. I am mind-boggled that there is so little done to counteract the soon extinction of the Polar Bears. Look at how crazy people are about Panda Bears; the populations freaks out when any information about panda bears are released and if a new one is born it's practically headline news. Polar Bears might be treated in this same way in 20 years-- so why not take action now before it's too late. Society realizes there is a problem and with such a "charismatic" animal I'm continually surprised that everyone is too selfish and lazy to take action. Maybe I should join Greenpeace and save them single-handedly?
Ok, so let me get this straight, we (humans) have put so much strain on the polar bear habitat that it has now begun to degrade. This forces the polar bears to search out new hunting grounds so that they survive. Their numbers are dropping, their environment is being slowly but surely destroyed, and the solution is to KILL THEM! To me this seems like yet another time that we have created a problem that we don't want to deal with (in this case the melting polar ice caps) so we ignore the real problem and try to fix another problem that arose from the first screw-up! If no one else noticed, the only reason for the advances of polar bears in Russia isn't because they like the weather, it's because they have no where else to go! Instead of murdering more of them why don't we do the right thing for once and try to rehabilitate the polar bears natural home.
Sam, I agree with you, however it is almost impossible to "rehabilitate the polar bears natural home," for it is in the process of being destroyed by the melting ice caps.
Overall, it's a sticky situation. There are hungry people, and there are polar bears without a home.
Who should we blame for this occurence? The people who cause "global warming," or those who are killing the polar bears? Or are they both in the wrong? If you want to be fair about this, shouldn't we target those who first created this phenomena or should everyone be equally punished?
And how can we help the polar bears?!?! It seems like it is almost too late to help them at this point :(
What a terrible choice to have to make. Isn't it times like these when economics doesn't seem to make sense? :( I guess economics can't always take in to consideration the "human" side of things.
Several weeks ago, I even read an essay suggesting shooting all the polar bears! The reason is that if human want to solve the problem of polar bears’ decreasing habitats, it will cost a great amount of money rather than just killing them all, which seems reasonable from an “economic” point of view. However, when we use cost-benefit method to evaluate a proposal, there is such thing as externalities, which is difficult to calculate. In this particular case, I guess the externalities of making polar bears is extremely high, which I assume most people would agree. But maybe Russia’s solution is not so bad, since at least now human cannot give out a better way to balance polar bears’ and our need of land.
I believe that it is necessary to kill these bears. It is dissapointing that this is happening to the polar bears, but we cannot let them roam around in peoples territory. They are dangerous animals and humans should beable to have the opportunity to protect themselves if neccessary.
If the bears are causing trouble then maybe a little population regulation is in order... better a few bears die from hunting that a huge amount from starvation.
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