Appropriating the "Saving" of the Polar Bear: Anthropocentrism and its Implications for Wildlife Protection

The recent popularization of the polar bear and the concerted efforts around “saving” it, are, to some, reflective of an increasing concern over the welfare of animals and the impact that human activity has on species survival. There are doubts however, on whether the recent politicization of polar bear protection has done much to actually improve the conditions for “saving” the bear. In this paper, I validate these doubts by demonstrating that the debate on “protecting” the bear has been constrained by an anthropocentric framework - where the rise and trajectory of activism for increased polar bear protection has remained inherently ill-equipped to adequately address or improve the conditions for “saving” the polar bear. Expressions of anthropocentrism will be represented in this paper via an overview of the politicization of the polar bear management debate. Specifically, I examine how the use of the polar bear as a consumptive resource, by the Inuit of Nunavut via the trophy hunt, came to be compromised and eventually displaced by the bear’s rising political and economic utility for advancing campaigns against activities causing climate change. As the bear became transformed from a consumptive to a non-consumptive resource, it was then, via its “saving”, wielded as a political tool by several environmental NGOs. “Protecting” the bear meant advancing a political agenda that conflicted with US economic interests, and in particular, those pertaining to oil and mineral development in Alaska. This in turn spurred an attempt to re-appropriate the “saving” of the bear, in a manner that disassociated it from addressing climate change and better served US economic interests. By examining how these three competing human interests came to intersect via their competing appropriations of the bear, this paper presents the conditions in which the “saving” of the polar bear became a constitutive part of advancing one particular human interest over another. In referring to a broader literature on anthropocentrism and wildlife management, I raise and address the concern that wildlife management exists in a paradox - where the preconditions for “successful” wildlife activism preclude it from achieving its goal to protect the well-being of wildlife. The aim of this paper is to add to a base of literature that seeks a more nuanced approach to understanding the relationship between human-interests and the resulting conceptual and practical limitations placed on incorporating animal well-being into wildlife activism and policy making.