WWF: Bears Threatened by Poaching, Pollution, Deforestation
7/26/99
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Title: WWF: Bears Threatened by Poaching, Pollution, Deforestation
Source: The Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: July 26, 1999
GLAND, Switzerland (AP) -- Poaching, pollution and disappearing
forests are putting the world's wild bear population under
unrelenting pressure, the World Wildlife Fund said in a report
released Tuesday.
Demand for bear bile, used in traditional Chinese medicine, remains
strong, said the 44-page study, titled "Bears in the Wild." Poaching
for gallbladders and hides increased dramatically this decade in
Russia, home of the world's largest brown bear population.
"While bear numbers in Asia slide downward, animals in the Americas
are being increasingly targeted by traders," said Elizabeth Kemf, one
of the study's authors.
Some 62 countries have wild bears, but she cautioned that a lack of
reliable studies makes it hard to put a number on bear populations.
"We know what is in the marketplace, but we don't know what is in the
forest," Kemf said.
The sun bear and black bear in southeast Asia have suffered from
unregulated capture for sale of body parts and for food, the report
said.
Forest fires, particularly on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, have
killed a number of sun bears, while logging in the region has
contributed to further reducing their habitat. The bear's survival is
doubtful in India and Bangladesh, according to the study.
In South America, forests that are home to the spectacled bear are
under threat from logging, cattle ranching, and clearance for drug
crops, while the bears also are hunted for bile and meat, it said.
In the United States, extensive land clearing for agriculture and
other development has reduced the historic range of the black bear to
20 percent of its original size in the southeastern United States.
The range of the grizzly bear in the continental United States is
only 2 percent of its original size.
The fortunes of Europe's remaining bears vary between population
increases in Italy and Austria and a situation in France where they
are "doomed to extinction unless drastic measures are taken soon,"
the WWF said.
The polar bear is the only species that still lives throughout its
original range, but could face a threat from pollutants in the
Arctic, it added. Chemicals accumulate in the tissues of the bear
with as yet unknown effects.
Climate change also could lead polar ice to thaw early and reduce the
bears' access to seals, their main source of food, the report said.