The voting just ended on a US proposal to ban the international trade in polar bear parts (skins, teeth, claws, skulls) at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Unfortunately, the trade ban failed. The proposal failed to gain the required support of 2/3 of the parties to the Convention, which would have barred all international commercial trade in polar bear parts. With this decision, polar bears will continue to be killed to supply the market for polar bear rugs. Facing devastation from climate change -- two thirds of the entire polar bear population will disappear by 2050 -- the parties to the Convention failed to remove the additional threat of being hunted for profit for the international market.
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