- ALASKA -- The mighty Alaskan
Kodiak bear is the world's largest land carnivore.
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- It makes up part of a unique brown bear population in
Alaska of 35,000. Alaska holds 98% of the brown bears left in America.
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- They've survived in this wilderness whilst in other parts
of the world the species has been wiped out by hunting, poaching and the
erosion of their habitat.
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- Mitch Demientieff is a native Athabascan. Swarmed by
mosquitoes, we creep through thick undergrowth in the forest in the interior
of Alaska.
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- He's breaking branches on the way so we don't surprise
any bears. He's doing what his people have been doing for survival for
centuries - hunting for bears.
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- Like many native Americans, Mitch is classified as a
subsistence-level hunter. It means that, by law, he can catch and kill
one bear per year for him and his family to eat.
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- But now, as chairman of the Federal Subsistence Board,
he has helped pushed through a new regulation meaning he and other subsistence
hunters can sell on parts of a captured bear in a commercial market.
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- He says: "We depend on subsistence for food but
we have to send our kids to school.
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- "We are not nomadic any more and we need to be a
member of the cash economy in the state of Alaska, the US and the world.
Everybody needs money these days. We are no exception to that."
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- 'Growing concerns'
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- This is bear country. Alaska is a living example of what
the lower 48 states were like before the bear population was devastated
by the arrival of people.
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- Poaching is a problem, though, in this vast state which
is difficult to police.
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- Conservationists are worried that protecting bears will
be harder still if there are cash incentives to kill them.
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- Dave Cline of the Kodiak Bear Trust says: "I and
others have growing concerns that we can't allow the commercial take of
brown bears in such a way that it could lead to the international trafficking
of its parts which has gone on unfortunately in other parts of north America
and the world.
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- "That is, killing bears strictly for the sale of
their hide, gall bladders, or their claws."
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- Hunting trophies are popular in Alaskan stores. Across
the state all sorts of furs are for sale - including polar bears and wolves.
But not brown bears.
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- The new law means grizzly furs will be on offer and about
$300 could get you real brown bear claws instead of fake ones - though
the items do have to be made into a native Alaskan art form, like necklaces.
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- Gus Gillespie from the Alaska Fur Exchange in Anchorage
says: "At the moment we sell artificial grizzly bear claws because
there's such a demand for them.
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- "People come in asking for brown bear claws all
the time. And I think that if it's legalised there will be a huge market.
I think that the fur itself would probably be used for trim in coats."
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- The bear regulations come into effect this summer in
time for the start of the autumn hunting season.
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- Subsistence hunters say only the bears already killed
for food will be used commercially. But conservationists say the blurring
of the lines between subsistence and profit is a worrying trend for this
threatened species.
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- © BBC MMIV http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3553324.stm
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